Recipient: University Medical Centre Greifswald
Funding: GO-Bio initial conceptual phase 4 (01/10/2023 to 30/09/2024, EUR 119,947.44)

Project description:

Calf serum (FCS) is used in the cultivation of cells in basic biomedical research and the production of modern therapeutics. FCS is obtained through the slaughter of unborn calves and is increasingly criticised and regarded as unethical. Human platelet lysate (HPL) is a promising, sustainable and ethically sound alternative to FCS. It is made from platelet (thrombocyte) concentrates (frozen) from donor blood, which have become unusable for patient care due to their short shelf life of four days. They must then be discarded. However, components that promote cell proliferation remain active for longer and can be extracted. The reuse of frozen food as HPL therefore makes sense ethically and economically in many respects.

In the LyoThroReg project, the previously optimised production method of HPL is being further developed into so-called lyophilised HPL (L-HPL) under the aspect of pharmaceutical standards and prepared for production scale. The potential applications for L-HPL and strategies for recycling and marketing will additionally be analysed in detail during the exploratory phase.

The aim is to bring sustainable and ethically harmless serum sales to market maturity and application in basic biomedical research, in the production of cell therapeutics and possibly as a novel regenerative therapeutic agent.