What is serum-free media? - (Jan/05/2006 )
Hi,
What is serum-free media? Is it just the usual media without fetal calf serum? Or I have to include supplements in the media to replace the FCS ?
Pls help..
thanks
hi
serum free media is the the usual media without fetal calf serum litteraly.But if it's for transfection, you don't have to add antibiotics and any supplement.
even for hybridoma or other cells, only use 100 fold less antibiotics or not at all
since such medium doesn't contain proteins carrier which catch small molecules like atb, effective concentration is lowered and usual concentrations of atb become toxic
Sebastien_
thanks for the suggestions.
I was doing a cell growth assay where i plate my cells in the usual medium that has 10% FCS. the next day, I removed the medium and added in fresh medium (without serum) together with the growth factor to see if the growth factor has an effect on the cell proliferation. However, my cells do not seem to grow very well in this serum-free medium. the medium i m using is RPMI-1640. so i was wondering if my medium is lacking some impt suppl when i omit the FCS.
sure,
FCS bring a lot of necessary susbtances for cell growth and survival.
when I was producing antibodies from hybridomas, I was culturing them 1-3 weeks in optimem, it's a medium which allows to reduce a lot the need of FCS.
I was doing a cell growth assay where i plate my cells in the usual medium that has 10% FCS. the next day, I removed the medium and added in fresh medium (without serum) together with the growth factor to see if the growth factor has an effect on the cell proliferation. However, my cells do not seem to grow very well in this serum-free medium. the medium i m using is RPMI-1640. so i was wondering if my medium is lacking some impt suppl when i omit the FCS.
You r not going to get much cell growth with serum free media as the cells arrest in the Go phase in the absence of serum. If you have to see the effect of growth factor on cells then you need to have a media which does not have or has very little (negligible) amounts of that growth factor in the full medium.
For eg. If one is looking at the effect of etradiol on cell growth what they do is use serum that has been charcoal stripped so that all the estradiolic compounds are removed. Then external estradiol is added to the cells and cell growth measured. Which growth factor are u looking at??
We tried a couple of studies where we were treating cells with air pollution particles. One group were cells supplemented with 10% FCS until treatment and the other group were starved of serum for 24 hours prior to treatment. We saw increased production of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the cells that had been starved of serum. Don't know if this is useful but thought you'd like to know