The commercialization of cultivated meat remains limited by the high cost of cell culture medium. Here, we discuss how multi-omics characterization and computational modelling can enable the design of cell line-specific, serum-free medium using valorized sources, offering improved cost-efficiency and sustainability.
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Change history
10 April 2026
In the version of the article initially published, Ying Swan Ho’s affiliation details were incorrect and have now been amended to: Singapore Institute of Technology, Food, Chemical and Biotechnology Cluster, Singapore, Singapore in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.
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Acknowledgements
S.S. acknowledges the Half-Time Research Assistantship (HTRA) from the Ministry of Education, Government of India and the Smart Protein Advanced Research & Knowledge (SPARK) Fellowship from the Good Food Institute India (GFI India). M.L. acknowledges funding support from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras through New Faculty Scheme (IP23242264BTNFSC009058) and Good Food Institute India (SP25260802BTAPSL009058). Y.S.H. and Y.Y.H. thank the SFS R&D 2.0 Programme Future Food Main Grant, NRF-SFSR&D2FF-0003 for supporting this work. The authors thank A. Manayankath for useful discussions.
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M.L. conceptualized the paper and coordinated the team. S.S. wrote the first draft. Y.Y.H. restructured the manuscript and contributed to writing and improving different sections. M.L. and Y.S.H. edited the manuscript and supervised the work. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
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High-impact and cost-effective amino acids: https://gfi.org/resource/amino-acid-cost-and-supply-chain-analysis-for-cultivated-meat/
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Ho, Y.Y., Sivakumar, S., Ho, Y.S. et al. Rational design of serum-free media for cultivated meat. Nat Rev Bioeng (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-026-00428-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-026-00428-4
