It is necessary to puncture the heart to obtain foetal calf's serum (FCS). And lots of more of this substance is still needed. Demand for FCS has increased by leaps and bounds in recent years, reports the German "Tageszeitung“, based on statements from producers and importers such as Biochrom or Sigma-Aldrich. Annual production of the serum is an estimated 500,000 litres. This means that a million calf foetuses are needed every year. The extraction of the valuable fluid is mostly painful. The blood serum, which made it possible, 40 years ago, to grow cells in a bottle, is then delivered to scientific and industrial laboratories.

Scientifically unsatisfactory and jeopardising animal welfare

This practice causes a paradox; in their efforts to find an alternative to animal experiments some researchers turned to cell cultures, in this, however, they use FCS again and the price for it is also paid by the animals. The procedure is questionable in as far as the primary extraction procedure for FCS is not–or cannot be–controlled. This was what René Fischer experienced, as well. Fischer is a researcher and heads his own group at Professor Donald Hilvert's ETH Laboratory of Organic Chemistry (1). When he wanted to visit to a company in Linz that produces FCS his hosts took him out to dine, but refused him insight into the enterprise.

It is not only because of animal welfare issues, however, that Fischer finds the use of FCS problematic. "It is not satisfying from a scientific point of view either to use an undefined solution," he explains. "It's as though one were to throw dirt into it.“ Because nobody knows for sure what traces or possibly what microbes could be lurking in the nutrient solution. This leads to a situation where cell cultures produced with FCS can hardly be registered as therapeutic cell lines. "In addition, each delivery of FCS is different." Nonetheless, a majority of researchers continue to use this method. Fischer thinks the reason for this is simply that the researchers in question had just got used to this method and didn't expect any laurels from searching for alternatives. Nonetheless, there was interest in alternatives, also at ETH Zurich.

Searching for alternatives to foetal calf's serum: ETH researcher René Fischer and his assistant, Yanela Gonzáles. large

Goal: full chemcial definition

Fischer tells that he had previously worked on cell lines for the production of antibodies, which were first bred from FCS in order to adapt them to a serum-free medium. He was able to take the next step - to establish FCS-free cell cultures from the outset - in 2001 after the Fonds for Animal-Free Research (FFVFF) asked him to head their project "Serum-Free" (2). The aim of this project is to significantly reduce or eliminate the proportion of foetal calf's serum in cell culture media. Subsequently, in agreement with ETH Zurich and thanks to third-party funding, Fischer has been able to work 30 per cent of his time on the project.

Together with the firm "Cell Culture Technologies“, which was founded and is directed by ETH alumnus Ferruccio Messi, and an assistant Fischer has succeeded in the meantime in developing four cell lines without FCS. These are now growing on media that answer the golden standard of a "full chemical definition": P3X63Ag8.653, SP2/0-Ag14, COS-1, VERO are accessible to researchers all over the world via the European Cell Bank ECACC. At present Fischer is busy with a cell line that needs cholesterol to grow. In addition, work is being continued on the cryonic conservation of adapted serum-free cell lines, because FCS is employed here too. "I can continue to work on the project for about a year," says the researcher, looking into the future. After that funding will cease.

Fischer is convinced that, in principle, all important cell lines can be cultivated in serum-free media and that the problems surrounding the extraction of FCS would therefore become obsolete. For Fischer this does not mean, however, that we will be able to renounce animal experiments in general. He made no secret of this in his dealings with FFVFF: "But where animals have to be used then everything must be done to minimise their suffering. The impure FCS method did not meet this criterion."