Florida-based biotech company Dyadic International has announced that independent analysis has confirmed that its animal-free bovine serum albumin is structurally identical to commercial animal albumin.

Bovine serum albumin (BSA) has applications for human therapeutics, cell culture media, vaccine development, R&D and more. It is frequently used as a component of the cell culture media to grow animal cells to produce cell-based meat.

BSA is the main constituent of fetal bovine serum, an animal-derived and expensive pharmaceutical product used for cell growth in cell-based meat that has been challenging to replace. A recombinant alternative could be a game-changer in making the cell-based meat industry slaughter-free and lowering production costs.

Joe Hazelton, chief business officer at Dyadic, said: “We are developing bovine and human animal-free serum albumin, both of which were successfully expressed efficiently with high purity. Initial third-party testing showed Dyadic’s albumin is analytically comparable to commercial reference samples which puts us closer to commercialisation opportunities in the rapidly expanding global serum albumin market.”

Dyadic International designs and builds microbial platforms to develop and manufacture biopharmaceuticals and alternative proteins for food, nutrition, health and wellness.

Ronen Tchelet, Dyadic’s chief scientific officer, added: "We believe our microbial expression platforms can speed development timelines and decrease final production costs”.

Dyadic’s microbial platform uses a specific filamentous fungal strain to produce recombinant proteins, which allows flexible commercial scales at low costs to meet the global demand for non-pharmaceutical recombinant proteins. Using the platform, the company has been able to successfully develop stable cell lines to produce animal-free recombinant bovine serum albumin and recombinant human serum albumin at high levels.

Dyadic’s research on creating serum albumin without using animals is a significant biotech breakthrough showing alternative ways to produce essential proteins, with the potential to accelerate the cultivated meat industry.