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Cleaning up packaging and empty boxes isn't the most glamorous task. Here's how we've approached it to make it a little more fun and eco-friendly! 
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It's been a truly massive 2025; if I’ve learned anything from piloting our chemically defined FBS replacement in 15+ Australian laboratories, it’s that even the most basic of cell culture activities varies between labs. Temperature, passaging reagents, thawing processes, cell culture plates; every single one of these variables impacts how cells transition to serum-free media. Unfortunately, these are exactly the kind of insights that don’t make the most exciting scientific papers. Useful insights are hidden in failed experiments that never get shared. Media City Scientific is now preparing for launch of our first product. We’ve thought a lot about how important it is to ensure the transition from FBS to our serum replacement product is super, super smooth. That’s why I’m committing to things that don’t scale; to support early adopters, I’ll offer 1:1 time with every single customer. But as we scale - even globally - we want to see that kind of tailored support scale too. That’s why we’re exploring a collaboration with Carmen Kivisild, PhD and her team at Elnora AI. Their platform is designed to capture negative data and turn it into shared knowledge, so labs can avoid repeating the same dead ends. Together, we’re asking: could the combination of deep scientific expertise and a trained GPT agent effectively support labs to transition away from serum use? We’re hoping to identify a pilot lab anywhere in the world to test this with us - you’ll get all of Media City’s scientific insights, wrapped up alongside a GPT to test whether this is an efficient way of making the transition. If your lab is considering a move away from FBS, or if you have stories about a transition-gone-poorly, let us know! Taking notes over here to make sure adoption can be super smooth ✏️  Lately I’ve been thinking about how to make cell culture more human-relevant: What if all our drug discovery pipelines used physiological glucose levels instead of the 25 mM you find in standard DMEM?
I suspect it would slow things down in the short-term; slower proliferation and poor adaptation of some lines would mean longer experimental timelines. But I imagine the long-term upside would be pretty massive, because right now, we’re actually doing the opposite. Standard DMEM has 25 mM glucose, while human blood sits around 5 mM. That’s a five-fold difference, and enough to push cells into metabolic states they’d never see in vivo. At these supraphysiological levels, cells often lean heavily on glycolysis even when oxygen is plentiful. That can mimic a “Warburg-like” phenotype, but one that may say more about the media than the cancer. The consequences are easy to imagine: - Drug sensitivity profiles that don’t translate to patients - Biomarkers that are actually cell culture artifacts - Potential therapeutic targets discovered under hyperglycemic stress that turn out to be irrelevant in vivo The result is years of expensive R&D on a series of targets that doesn’t efficiently lead to new therapeutics. And here’s the kicker: cells long adapted to 25 mM glucose often struggle when you dial back to physiological 5 mM. That struggle itself tells us something important. We’ve been optimizing our models for convenience and fast proliferation, at the expense of human relevance. Of course, it’s not as simple as “5 mM glucose = human-relevant biology.” Tumors often experience lower glucose than blood, and glucose is just one piece of the puzzle. Still, I can’t help but wonder if we had standardized around human-like conditions decades ago, how many “failed” drugs might have never made it past the cell culture dish and how many more real opportunities might have been identified sooner? Maybe the future includes testing across a panel of media which includes physiological plasma-like media as well as tumor-mimicking low-nutrient media. It would be slower and messier…but possibly much more efficient for patching up our leaking drug development pipelines, which would ultimately make it more cost-effective. Anyway, I realise it’s a possible future rather than an easily solved problem today, but I’m curious to hear any thoughts, especially from folks involved with these sorts of large scale drug discovery screens. Fun fact: The cell culture media you’re probably using was invented before the moon landing.
BME, 1957 DMEM, 1959 RPMI, 1966 Here we are, still using them as the defaults for human cell culture, despite the fact that we have learned so much more about the human body in the past 60-70 years. Enter Plasmax, 2019. Frankly, I’m shocked that it’s not more widely used because it’s a delightfully simple concept; profile human plasma, then recreate it in basal media form. If you want cells to behave like they do in the body, give them something that actually resembles the body. Plasmax is a great reminder that so many of the standard “best practices” we’ve inherited in science were built with the tools and knowledge of their time. As our knowledge and capabilities improve, so should our tools. Don't get me wrong, the original basal media still very much have their place, but let's select our tools deliberately rather than relying on defaults. My two cents? If you’re a scientist studying metabolism, cancer biology, or drug discovery, this is one of those innovations worth paying attention to. All the details can be found in Vande Voorde J, et al. Sci Adv. 2019 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6314821/ How much fetal cow goes into 1 x bottle of FBS? It depends on the age of the fetal cow in question, but 150mL-500mL; that’s how much FBS you can harvest from 1 x fetal cow. Really puts into perspective all those bottles of FBS that arrive neatly frozen by the pallet into some companies. There are lots of reasons I’d like to see cell culture’s reliance on FBS disappear; improved reproducibility for experiments and smooth regulatory approval for cell therapies are often called out by my collaborators who want to go chemically defined. But there’s also an emotional ick factor once you start being unable to stop yourself from calculating the number of fetal cows that went into your FBS order. If you’re a Sydney-based scientist, this cow thinks you should know: the third and final stage of external testing for FBS Replacement Solution by Media City Scientific is kicking off September 1st. I provide the animal-free and chemically defined product, you provide the cells. You’ll get one to one support in going chemically defined - even if your process doesn’t ultimately involve FRS - and we’ll be able to launch a product that has been heavily street-tested, so we can be super transparent with scientists about how it works across a broad range of cells. No use case too basic or too unusual, we’ve seen everything from cell culture courses & CHO cells to organoid-based therapies destined for scaled, cGMP manufacturing. Just send me a message ☺️  I used to think bootstrapping a biotech company was impossible. So far, we’re doing it anyway - and we aren’t alone. Media City Scientific is following an unusual - but not unheard of - playbook for biotech companies.
While external capital isn’t necessarily off the table long-term, when we first registered the company, we challenged ourselves to get to market without raising. This might sound crazy, and I get it. During my PhD, I dropped 10k on antibodies before 8am on a Tuesday. Wet-lab R&D is expensive, even before you factor in facility costs, working capital for manufacturing, and go-to-market logistics. But over the past few years, we’ve been quietly building a chemically defined FBS replacement (FRS) without raising a pre-seed, without a big team, and without a large facility. Just a few scientists, some creative business strategies and laboratory hacks, plus a stubborn belief that FBS should not be the standard. Oh, and a lot of nights dreaming about cell culture media ingredients. We’re not the first to take this approach. 🧫 Abveris bootstrapped an antibody discovery service business using revenue from early contracts. They scaled steadily and were acquired by Twist Bioscience in 2021. 🧪 Promega Corporation was founded in the 1970s. Starting with just a few enzymes, it slowly expanded into a global life sciences powerhouse, largely funded by revenue growth. 🔬 Invitrogen began in a garage in the 1980s, selling kits for molecular biology. Similar to Promega, they grew steadily on product revenue and later became part of Thermo Fisher. 🇩🇪 NanoTemper Technologies has been super generous about sharing their nearly 20-year history via blogs and Philipp's LI posts. No VC, just steady, boot-strapped growth from grants and direct sales to scientists. Today, they’re a global leader in protein characterization technology, with over 150 employees world-wide. They’re still founder-owned. I’ve lived both the bootstrapping and VC-backed playbooks for biotech. They’re very different games. Different challenges, different opportunities, and while some problems absolutely require substantial investment to get off the ground, I’ve enjoyed learning about the commercial teams who took the unconventional path to bring their science to the world. Turns out, the assumption that “biotech startup” equals “must raise VC” isn’t necessarily true. I’d wager most scientists have heard of at least one of the companies above. Media City Scientific took to the Bioinnovation Spotlight Stage at AusMedTech in Sydney to share the results from external pilot testing for our chemically defined, FBS replacement product (FRS). Spoiler: lots of cell types grow very nicely in FRS at a comparable level to FBS - and we are seeing that in external laboratories, not just our own! We met a variety of groups who may ultimately become involved with our scale-up, manufacturing, and distribution plans for our full commercial launch. The AusBiotech Innovation Program through the 2025 Industry Growth Program funded our attendance and showcase at this event - thank you! On a separate note, Katie vaguely hopes she never pitches when quite this pregnant ever again - it's hard to find conference-appropriate clothes for the final weeks before giving birth!  5 years ago, I had just joined a very early-stage startup that was awarded an MVP grant from the NSW government. Our team went on to achieve some outcomes in the cellular agriculture space that a lot of folks would have called - sometimes still call - impossible. Today, it feels really satisfying that Media City Scientific has been awarded the same MVP grant from Investment NSW. This non-dilutive funding will support the remaining external pilot testing stages for FBS Replacement Solution (FRS) before we scale and fully commercialise. A more personal note: I’ve cultured cells nearly every day for the past 18 months - often at night and doing my longest lab days on weekends. A relentless mental game, but one that usually hasn’t felt like “work.” And yet, for every day I come out of the lab, enthused and proclaiming to the family that “stock is up!”, there’s a day where I’m riddled with self-doubt and wondering whether this whole bootstrapping a biotech company thing - especially alongside raising young children - is grounds for insanity. Receiving this funding was a little emotional because while money is only a tool, it’s become an opportunity to pause and blow our own minds a little bit at how far we’ve come with a shockingly tiny amount of resources. Truly, I didn’t think we could get this far in biotech on grants, bootstrapping and mutually beneficial collaborations alone (plus grit & a healthy hustle). It’s really, really fun to prove to your past self that you’re capable of more than you thought. Thanks everyone who’s been a part of this crazy ride so far - and thanks NSW government for helping to build up the local biotech economy. We truck on.  Katie is heading to AusMedTech in Sydney next week - catch Media City Scientific pitching our latest technology achievements during lunch on May 7th at the Bioinnovation Spotlight Stage! We’ll be especially looking to meet folks who want to be involved in the final pilot testing stages for our chemically defined, clean and animal-free replacement for FBS. We’re also making plans for what scale-up, manufacturing, and distribution should look like as we go fully commercial, so will be keen to chat with anyone who’s in that space. And of course, Katie is looking forwards to meeting a few of the many people she has met via Linkedin this year in person for the first time! A big thank you to the AusBiotech Innovation Program through the 2025 Industry Growth Program for facilitating our attendance.  Behind the scenes of building a biotech: Tearing my hair out over cold shipping logistics & kicking off Round #2 of external testing for FBS Replacement Solution (FRS). Highs/Lows of the month ⤵️ The highs 🎉 1️⃣ Round #2 of external testing has started! It felt like I visited every major scientific research institute in Melbourne so a huge shoutout to our collaborators and everyone who offered an introduction. Startups and children both take a village! Cell culture media is cool because it underpins so many research areas - from improving our fundamental understanding of biology to creation of new therapeutics - and round #2 covers all of that ground. 2️⃣ Import licenses were approved & supply chain is on track. 3️⃣ New cells & minor technical breakthroughs! Our FRS product information sheet will soon include the growth curves for a wide variety of common immortalised cells - in addition to the nutritionally demanding primary cells we’ve already tested. 4️⃣ While we are sticking to our “lean, mostly bootstrapped biotech” philosophy, the 2024 efforts we put towards grants are paying off. Will share our learnings after the final signatures are sorted 😊 The lows 🙃 1️⃣ Cold shipping logistics are tough, especially if you’re located in a regional area of Australia. We had a few FRS deliveries for pilot testing which weren’t as smooth as we’d have liked. You might think “external testing” is mostly for product validation…and it is, in part. But it’s also the time to iron out shipping processes, instruction manuals, and other user-facing interfaces. 2️⃣ Getting paid by overseas folks can be unexpectedly complicated…also important to sort this out now versus later. 3️⃣ I got sick. It slowed us down. The ugly reality of a small company. Overall feeling? Momentum is so energising. Still, I’ve found founder life is a lot like managing a big team; you could be doing an objectively excellent job but there is still inevitably something which is a little bit on fire. Managing that emotional roller coaster is key and I’m grateful for the support system around me (though advice in this area is always welcome!)  |
What's been happening?Sharing the Media City journey is important to us because we want to encourage the next generation of scientists to establish companies that will advance scientific research. Check back regularly for the "building in public" updates on what it looks like to establish a scientific company. Archives
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