Protein hydrolysates in cell culture: Toward multi-omics characterization

The high cost of conventional cell culture media has driven demand for sustainable, cost-effective serum-free formulations in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and cultivated meat production. Although plant- and yeast-derived hydrolysates are generally considered to be promising additives, significant variability in raw materials and processing conditions results in substantial compositional and batch-to-batch differences between products, making it challenging to predict effectiveness in cell culture a priori. This review examines hydrolysate media additives through the specific lens of comprehensive multi-omic characterization as a means of addressing this uncertainty. While typical characterization is often limited to metrics such as degree of hydrolysis or color, detailed metabolomic and peptidomic profiling remains uncommon. We identify a gap in systematic, high-resolution characterization and argue that integrating compositional and bioactivity analyses is essential to transition hydrolysates from undefined inputs toward semi-defined media components.