Galileo Defendi-Cho

Currently, my work at Tufts focuses on engineering bovine satellite cells to reduce the need for insulin in media. I’m designing a project aiming to constitutively express myristoylated and phospho-mimetically activated Protein Kinase B (Akt), driving proliferation in the absence of insulin. I’m culturing stem cells, formulating media, and assembling, amplifying, and transfecting an engineered sleeping beauty plasmid, with the goal of reducing media costs for cultivated meat applications. Previously, my work at Colorado College focused on serum-free media development. I co-designed and conducted a project aiming to replace FBS with algae extracts. Using Chlorella vulgaris extract and other additives like FGF and insulin, we were able to achieve >50% cell growth and >70% cell viability in bovine fibroblasts compared to FBS-containing control media.