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Here’s what I’m seeing from the NAMs space lately, following the Non-Animal Technologies Network (NAT-Net) Vanguard Symposium in Sydney last week: → My favorite talk was linked to a new strategy for dynamic control of cell exposure to signals which drive cell fate decisions. As someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the complex mixture of signaling molecules that is fetal bovine serum, I found this an interesting new technology with a number of commercial implications. → A huge range of new organoid models were presented; cell culture media and surface stiffness are two key parameters that often help optimise a given model. Reproducibility challenges linked to handling were repeatedly cited; robotics are often the solution of choice. For one model, it took over a year to screen over 20 different combinations of cytokines. That’s a lot. I’m not sure what approach they took here, but I would love to see more academic scientists reach for design of experiments-based methodologies or Bayesian approaches to accelerate these kinds of studies. → I’m seeing increasing overlap in a specific challenge faced by two different groups of scientists. On the NAM side: scientists trying to replace animal dosing studies with cell-based dose-response data. On the biopharma side: scientists running large scale cell-based assays to discover new drugs. The challenge is that albumin present in fetal bovine serum binds certain drug candidates, which impacts potency. FBS batch variability makes this more problematic. However, our animal-free FBS replacement contains a much lower albumin content and as a result, we’ve worked with scientists on the biopharma side to switch their cultures to FRS in order to remove that confound and inconsistency. This means cleaner screening data and an easier case to make to regulators on assay reliability. And of course it was great to be able to share some of the results of our FRS pilot studies, completed across a range of Australian and NZ labs over the last 18 months. Thank you to those labs for allowing me to present your data and thank you to Beyond Animal Research for support of the NZ pilot studies! P.S. NZ scientists, this access program is ongoing, so please reach out if you are keen to test some FRS Pioneer! 
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Cambridge, UK and New South Wales, Australia – 7th July 2026 – Qkine, Ltd. today announced it will begin global distribution of Media City Scientific’s FRS™ Pioneer, a chemically-defined, animal replacement solution to support routine cell culture in traditional basal media. The main research challenges with fetal bovine serum (FBS) are that, whilst it works well as a growth supplement, it is biologically undefined, variable, hard to control and comes with significant ethical and moral concerns. That creates problems for reproducibility, interpretation and clinical transability. There is now a genuine replacement alternative in FRS™ Pioneer, which shifts the cell culture media paradigm from the “black box” to a controlled input, trading undefined complexity for an explicit, engineerable, and reproducible choice. “Working with Media City Scientific is an absolute dream with the FRS™ Pioneer product completely aligned with our Qkine 100% animal-free, chemically defined non-negotiables. This is a potentially game-changing product for life science research and translatable pharma & biotech. Customers can now decide on one hand between continuing to be accepting and supporting the unknowns and risks which are associated with FBS whilst now on the other, proactively choosing to switch to a chemically-defined, animal-free FBS replacement which will work consistently, reproducibly, and in the meantime removing the supply chain risks associated with agricultural supplies of fetal calves.” Rob Nixon, Commercial Director, Qkine. “Scientists around the world are already using FRS™ Pioneer to make serum-free cell culture easy, at a time when life science research is undergoing a step change away from undefined animal products to defined inputs. Qkine’s range of recombinant animal-free proteins are a perfect complement to FRS™ Pioneer. Together they enable complete serum elimination across the most nutritionally demanding cell types which underpin many next generation therapies. Media City Scientific is excited to be working with Qkine to support many more scientists in making foetal bovine serum a fragment of history.” Katie Day, CSO, Media City Scientific. About Qkine Qkine manufactures high-purity, animal origin-free growth factors, cytokines, and other complex bioactive proteins for life science applications, including stem cell and organoid culture. Headquartered in Cambridge, UK, Qkine addresses fundamental biological, quality, and scale-up challenges by integrating proprietary recombinant protein production processes with protein engineering approaches, delivering more reliable tools for research and bio-manufacturing. Actively supporting and innovating in emerging fields such as 3D stem cell models, organoids, cellular agriculture, cell therapy, regenerative medicine and organ-on-a-chip, Qkine aims to accelerate the impact of these technologies on human health and wellbeing. Please visit qkine.com, email [email protected] or follow us on LinkedIn. About Media City Scientific Media City Scientific is an Australian biotechnology company committed to making serum-free adoption both practical and accessible for researchers and manufacturers worldwide. Its flagship product, FRS™ Pioneer, is a fully chemically defined and animal-origin free serum replacement engineered to support robust growth across a wide range of cells without the lot-to-lot variability or ethical concerns linked to fetal bovine serum. For more information visit mediacityscientific.com, or follow on LinkedIn  |
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