human serum in cell culture - is it possible to use human serum in cell culture? (Oct/01/2007 )
I want to culture MCF-7 and MDA-MB231 cells. Is it possible to use human serum instead of FBS? Also, how old can the serum be? 
Please help.
Why do you want to use human serum, not FBS?
Do you want to investigate the effect of human serum (or some factor in it) on that cell? If not just use FBS.
Yes, thats exactly what I want to do. I have human serum collected from several different people and I want to apply it to cell culture to determine the potential of stimulating cells to grow and proliferate. I have seen this done in a few papers but with little detail provided so I dont know really how to go about this or if it is plausible. Can you offer advice?
Yes, thats exactly what I want to do. I have human serum collected from several different people and I want to apply it to cell culture to determine the potential of stimulating cells to grow and proliferate. I have seen this done in a few papers but with little detail provided so I dont know really how to go about this or if it is plausible. Can you offer advice?
You can mimic those paper, if there is no information. You can compare with negative control (using FBS), vv.
You can also add fraction of human serum into your culture medium!
People used human serum for culture in the 50s, soon discovered FBS is far better. I dont know what do you want to prove, less effective than FBS, maybe?
Why you said FBS is beter than human? if it's true, why?????????
I thogth it was for economy, or something like etical facts or risk of presence of something lik virus (HIV, Hepatitis..)
Do you know FBS is better than calf serum, which in turn is better than adult bovine serum?
I thought FBS (fetal bovine serum) was the exact same as fetal calf serum? Also, the adult bovine serum has many hormone factors that may give unwanted results.
Calf serum is also called bovine calf serum, which is not equivalent of fetal calf serum or FBS. Adult serum does not have as much growth factors, and other nutrients when compared to FBS. I assume adult human serum has less growth factors as well.