InVitria announced the launch of Optiferrin, a high performance, well-defined and animal-free recombinant transferrin for use in mammalian cell culture. Optiferrin is a cell culture supplement which supports cell growth by regulating the amount of iron transported to the cell. Since iron is required for healthy cell culture performance, it is a critical component to reach optimal performance.

Optiferrin provides superior performance in cell culture and addresses the need for animal-free transferrin in many applications including stem cells, primary cells, hybridoma cells and Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells.

"Optiferrin has undergone extensive testing by our beta customers since June 2009. They have formulated Optiferrin into their cell culture media to provide maximum performance and they liked their results. We are delighted to be able to bring this sort of value to our customers through innovations like Optiferrin," said Scott Deeter, president & CEO of InVitria.

"Transferrin is nature's way to deliver iron in a non-toxic manner," said Dr. Steve Pettit, InVitria's director of Cell Culture Development. "Our product development, along with beta customer results, confirmed that Optiferrin delivered optimal performance without any cell damage. This alleviates customer's concerns about animal-origin infectious contaminants or the headaches caused by addition of elemental iron and iron chelators in cell culture media," said Dr Pettit.

Optiferrin is a complimentary product to InVitria's other cell culture supplement products, which include Cellastim, Lacromin, Zap-CHO and Zap-Hybridoma.