Working with animal compounds or sera is from the ethically point of view problematic and is in many cases not predictive enough. At the same time animal products carry the risk of unknown infectious pathogens. As a first step to overcome these issues is it to avoid the usage of animal derived products for human research. This is in line with the guidelines of the FDA/NIH published last year. Classical used materials widely use are animal serum (FCS), Matrigel and other animal proteins mixtures.
For the production of Matrigel alone, approximately 3.6 million mice are sacrificed every year. Approx. 1 – 2 million bovines fetuses are needed for this which leads to approx. 800.000 liter FCS.
A second final step will be to use only defined & animal-free solutions e.g. chemically defined media or defined & purified enzymes for tissue dissociation. Not using black boxes will significantly increase predictivity and reproducibility of experimental designs.
PELOBiotech offers a hand-picked portfolio of Animal Component-Free (ACF) & chemically defined products—made by scientists for scientists—to eliminate biological variability and deliver the lean, consistent data your research demands.
