changing cell culture media - (Mar/29/2012 )

Hi all,

I am culturing SUM159 human breast cancer cell line and used to culture it with F12 + 5%FBS + 5ug/ml Insulin + 1ug/ml Hydrocortisone + 10m HEPES. Later, I changed the medium to DMEM/F12 + 10%FBS and cells look happy and grow very well.

I looked up some literatures and realized that most papers indicated that Insulin and Hydrocortisone are always supplemented although other medium is used such as DMEM or DMEM/F12.

This is one example but I just wonder if I can keep changing whichever media I want if cells look completely happy. Please share your experience and knowledge. Thanks!

Cancerous...

You can change the medium, but it does change how the cells behave and also selects for populations of cells that can survive the changes - which means that you are no longer working with the cell line you thought you were, you are now working with a derivative of that line!

You can wean (slow change from one medium to another by using different ratios of each medium) cells onto different sorts of medium, but you have to be very careful to characterize the cells after doing so to ensure that nothing important to your experiments has happened.