Transition to Animal Free Innovations Helpathon 8

Gibbs, S. (Organiser)

Activity: Participating in or organising an event › participating

Period	22 May 2023 → 24 May 2023
Event type	Workshop
Location	Amsterdam, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International

Keywords

serum free
TPI
matrigel free

Documents & Links

A big thank you to the 40 researchers and company representatives participating in Helpathon #8! ‘I was wonderfully surprised when the participating companies openly shared their real research data with us describing exactly what was already out there for us.’ says Sue. Just look for yourself at the 5 minute documentary, the energy was strong. And Sue has already submitted a project proposal with participating companies to bring animal free organoids further. ‘We want to transition from FCS and Matrigel to animal free culture media and hydrogels, and to prepare standardized procedures which will be available for everybody in this research field. Some of the companies, not only had FCS free, but also totally animal free (xeno-free) media which they thought would work for our cell cultures.’ This was the first Helpathon for Margot. As an excellent project manager she had to trust the organic meandering nature of the process:’ Having so many people participating from Dutch academia, international academia, companies involved in finding animal-free alternatives for Matrigel and FCS as well as other organizations was truly inspiring (...). I promised that I would make the results available to others to avoid duplication of efforts, so you will hear from me in the future.’ The whole experience revealed both the locked in mindsets and emerging new possibilities: ‘Matrigel is seen as the golden standard for stem cell culture and people have difficulty moving away from it. However, this Helpathon has shown me that there are many alternatives currently in the pipeline at several companies and some are already on the market. It really helped me that so many people shared their experiences and wisdom on ECM matrixes, as this will make the optimization much more efficient’ says Germaine.