Potential of animal-welfare compliant and sustainably sourced serum from pig slaughter blood

Abstract The animal product most used as a stimulatory additive for cell cultivation is still fetal bovine serum (FBS). Besides the ethical concerns regarding serum collection, the main problems of FBS are batch-to-batch variability and the resulting risk of lower reproducibility, the differences between species, the presence of undefined/unknown components, and the risk of contamination. In contrast, pig blood, which is a by-product of slaughter, is a sufficiently available and sustainable resource with a high degree of standardization in terms of donor age, weight, and genetics. The variations in preparations from pig slaughter blood seem to be comparatively low, and consequently, batch effects might be much smaller, suggesting that the reproducibility of the research data obtained may be increased. Our pilot study aimed to investigate, as a proof of concept, whether adult human and porcine stem cells of different tissue origins proliferate and differentiate adequately when FBS is completely or partially replaced by porcine serum (PS). We could show that the human and porcine stem cells were vital and proliferated under partial and full PS supplementation. Furthermore, using PS, the two cell types studied showed tissue-specific differentiation (i.e., lipid vacuoles as a sign of adipogenic or myotubes as a sign of myogenic differentiation). In conclusion, the pig slaughter blood–derived serum has promising potential to be a replacement for FBS in adult stem cell cultures. Therefore, it could serve as a basis for the development of new cell culture supplements.