ClearX9™: an efficient alternative to fetal bovine serum for growing animal cells in vitro

Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) is a nutrient-rich fluid that contains nutritional and macromolecular factors essential for cell growth. Every year millions of pregnant cows are slaughtered in search of FBS leading to huge environmental consequences. Here we report ClearX9™ - an affordable, sustainable, ethical, and effective replacement for FBS. ClearX9™ cell culture medium was used to grow HeLa (cervical cancer cells), HEK293T (embryonic kidney transformed cells) and Nthy Ori-3-1 (primary thyroid follicular transformed epithelial cells) and showed encouraging growth patterns and good cellular health. Compared with the FBS-enriched cell culture medium, ClearX9™ scored positive on all the parameters suggesting ClearX9™ as a credible alternative to FBS. In future, more work is required to establish the efficacy of ClearX9™ in toxicology testing, bio-manufacturing, regenerative medicine, and vaccine research. HIGHLIGHTS ### Competing Interest Statement Sumit Gautam, Neeraj Verma are full time employees of Clear Meat Pvt Ltd. Siddharth Manvati works as CEO and Pawan K Dhar as Chief Mentor in the company. Both Siddharth Manvati and Pawan K Dhar own stocks in the company. * Abbreviations: SG : Sumit Gautam NV : Neeraj Verma SM : Siddharth Manvati PKD : Pawan K. Dhar