replacing fetal bovine serum with other types of bovine serum in culture medium - (Mar/31/2017 )

Dear All

for budget related issues, I would like to know if anyone has supplemented the culture medium (DMEM r RPMI1640) for human cancer cells with other types of bovine serum (e.g., newborn bovine calf serum) instead of fetal bovine serum?

As you may know the difference in price between FBS and  BCS is almost 10 folds (500 vs 50 USD approximately). I know that growth factors are at higher concentrations in FBS than any other type of bovine serum, but dose this practically affect the growth and drug sensitivity of human cancer cells (adherent and suspension cells)?

thanks

Depends on the cells. Some cells will survive (e.g. HeLa) and grow just fine in BSA, while others will not do well at all. However, one way to look at this is - how does this affect your experiment? Cells that adapt to live under the conditions associated with BCS will be different to the parent line, so will respond differently to those grown in FBS.