Serum and Protein Free Media

For many decades bovine serum has been used as an essential component for the growth of animal cells in culture. However, the combined disadvantages of variability in composition, cost but particularly the potential for contamination with viruses or prions has been the driver for the substitution of serum with a more defined and animal-component free media. For some cell lines substitution with just a few simple ingredients can provide an effective liquid media for growth. However, for a number of cell lines finding a suitable serum-free formulation for growth has been very challenging. Because of the complexity of these formulations statistically designed methods have been adopted to ensure a rational approach to media design. This, as well as the increasing availability of microbially-produced recombinant forms of animal proteins has been significant in the development of animal-component free and chemically defined media. Sometimes chemically-defined media have poorer characteristics for growth promotion than the serum-based formulations that they replace. However, incremental steps of improvement are possible by the addition of key ingredients or by adaptation of the cells to newly formatted serum-free media.

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1. Department of Microbiology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada Michael Butler

1. Michael Butler

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1. University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Mohamed Al-Rubeai

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Butler, M. (2015). Serum and Protein Free Media. In: Al-Rubeai, M. (eds) Animal Cell Culture. Cell Engineering, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10320-4_8

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