Fetal calf serum components
On a laboratory scale, synthetic tissue culture media are supplemented with relatively high levels of horse or bovine serum albumin or fetal calf serum (FCS). This improves the viability of tissue culture cells but also has disadvantages:
- the introduction of animal-derived proteins that have to be removed during downstream processing;
- potential introduction of contaminants, such as fungi, bacteria, viruses or prions (e.g. BSE);
- variable quality and high costs.
This has lead to the development and use of serum-free media (SFM). The first step was the replacement of serum by protein hydrolysates of bovine origin and the addition of animal-derived proteins.
It has been demonstrated that certain hydrolysed proteins are extremely cost-effective FCS replacers in media formulations. Primatone RL from Sheffield, was found to increase the maximum cell numbers and the viability of a hybridoma cell culture under low serum or serum-free media and to give a significant improvement in antibody production.
The final aim, however, is the development of serum-free media that are free of animal-derived products. Several cell lines including hybridoma cell lines, CHO and BHK cells showed excellent growth performance in media containing vegetable protein hydrolysates and from the HYPEP series and supplemented with ITES (insulin, transferrin, ethanolamine and selenite).