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A vital ingredient used by laboratories around Australia is in short supply and its rising value is having an impact on important research.
Key points:
- Foetal calf blood from Australian abattoirs has hit a record $683 a litre
- Researchers rely on the commodity for work such as vaccine manufacturing and cancer research
- Some labs are importing foetal bovine serum from overseas, which is currently cheaper
Foetal calf blood, mostly used in medical research and pharmaceutical industries, has this year reached a record price of $683 a litre, ex-abattoir.
The blood is collected when pregnant cows are sent to slaughter.
Cattle producers do not gain financially from this, but abattoirs do.
Meat and Livestock Australia's Jenny Lim said there were a few factors impacting on supply.
"As preg-testing becomes a normal practice and genetics improve, we're getting less females [in calf] coming through the processing system," she said.
"And over the last three years, the supply of cattle going to abattoirs has reduced, which reduces the supply of foetal blood that could be harvested by the processor."
No alternatives for cancer research
Claudine Bonder from the Centre for Cancer Biology at the University of South Australia said there were no alternatives to foetal bovine serum (FBS) in cancer research.
"The blood is so rich in nutrients and really high in growth factors and serum protein, which is just not found in adult [bovine] blood," she said.
"And despite all of our efforts to use adult blood or synthetic replacements, nothing matches."
Professor Bonder said the rising cost of FBS could have several unfortunate consequences.
"We budget as best we can for reagents like foetal bovine serum, but if the price doubles or triples, it can fall outside our budget, and then we can't do the experiment," she said.
"Our preference is for Australian-sourced FBS ... but it can be cost prohibitive sometimes, and we are competing against other research labs who need that resource."
French bovine serum much cheaper
Berrimah Laboratory in Darwin uses FBS daily to grow cell cultures for biosecurity surveillance and research.
Principal virologist Richard Weir said the lab's most recent purchase of FBS had come from France.
He said the price did play a factor, but the French serum also had some attributes they were after.
"What we look for in a new batch of serum is something that doesn't contain the antibodies for the viruses that we want to grow, doesn't contain any infectious agents and promotes the growth of the cells," Dr Weir said.
"If the locally sourced foetal bovine serum doesn't provide that, then we go internationally."
Dr Weir said the French bovine serum was almost $200 a litre cheaper than the Australian product.
He said labs were "very aware" of the rising cost of FBS, and it was becoming a prohibitive cost for some research projects with a limited budget.
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