Up-to-Date Research on the Composition of Blood Slaughterhouse By-Products Derived FBS Substitutes and Their Applicability to Animal Cell Culture

Abstract

Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is a critical media component in cell culture, but it is also expensive and highly controversial from an animal welfare level, being of fetal blood origin. Therefore, our study aimed to develop FBS substitutes from slaughterhouse waste blood. We pooled the blood from slaughterhouse by-products (BSBPs) of three major livestock species (cattle, pigs, and chickens) and performed nutritional and hematological analyses of serum, plasma, whole blood, and cruor. Our substitutes were cultured with C2C12 cells, and the serum of each livestock species showed a cell proliferation effect. Nonetheless, the nutritional and hematological profiles of BSBPs from this study can provide basic component information for using livestock blood as a raw material for various preparations. Furthermore, the cell culture results using C2C12 cells indicate that using BSBPs can solve expensive cell culture costs and animal ethics issues by replacing FBS.