Background
The high cost and ethical concerns surrounding fetal bovine serum (FBS) have remained critical bottlenecks in scaling cultivated meat (CM) production. Current serum-free media (SFM) development has faced multidimensional challenges, including incomplete understanding of diverse cell line growth requirements, time-consuming optimization cycles, and high mass-production costs. While traditional trial-and-error approaches have produced suboptimal solutions, computational tools and synthetic biology advances offer unprecedented opportunities for systematic medium design and optimization.
Scope and approach
This review examined the benefits and constraints of SFM relative to conventional serum-based media, highlighted key challenges in SFM development and optimization for CM, and proposed potential strategies to address these limitations. We further introduced an integrated framework leveraging data-driven analytics and synthetic biology for rational design and optimization of cost-effective SFM.
Key findings and conclusions
The adoption of SFM in CM production was limited by lengthy development phases and substantial industrialization costs. To address these challenges, we proposed a combined strategy incorporating multi-omics profiling, systems biology, multi-scale metabolic modeling, machine learning (ML), and real-time monitoring, adaptive feeding-guided SFM formulation. Additionally, synthetic biology approaches, such as food-grade production of growth factors (GFs) and functional GF substitutes to reduce cost, cell line engineering, and cell sorting technologies to decrease exogenous dependencies, as well as circular bioprocessing for improved sustainability, offered viable routes toward lowering large-scale production expenses. When implemented in synergy, these technologies will pave the way for efficient and scalable SFM-based CM industrialization.
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