serum-free contiuous cells lines from marine organisms

To ensure the sustainable use of marine resources, innovative biotechnological approaches are being sought to reduce both overfishing and the use of experimental animals. One particularly promising strategy is the establishment of continuous, proliferation- and differentiation-competent cell lines derived from marine organisms. To date, such cell lines have primarily been developed in industrial contexts and are rarely made publicly available. Consequently, there is a substantial demand for openly accessible marine cell lines for research and development. The aim of the present project is to generate commercially available, continuous muscle cell lines from various marine organisms, including food fish, crabs, and shrimp. Source organisms will be obtained from the aquaculture facilities of the Alfred Wegener Institute and can be provided at different developmental stages. A key focus of the project is the establishment of fully animal-free cultivation conditions. From the outset, serum-free media based on plant-derived serum substitutes will be employed, which are currently being developed at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences. The resulting cell lines are potentially unlimited in their proliferative capacity and enable a wide range of applications in basic research, particularly in the study of muscle differentiation in marine organisms, the development of energy-efficient cultivation strategies, and the assessment of toxicological and pathogenic effects without the use of live animals. In addition, these cell lines represent an important resource for applied biotechnological applications, including the long-term perspective of alternative protein-based production systems.