Serum-free cell culturing

Why serum free culturing?

Since the beginning of the 20th century, when the first attempts were made to maintain eukaryotic cells in vitro, until today, animal sera have played an important role in cell culture. In the early days, animal sera were known as “physiological nutrition” and general “cell protecting” solutions. Today, fetal bovine serum (FBS) is widely used as a growth promoting additive in cell culture media.

However, due to the efforts of animal protection groups, it became known that the harvesting of FBS is cruel and painful to the fetuses. Consequently, some scientists are trying to find alternatives to FBS. The search for alternatives to FBS is further driven by the fact that the purification of cell culture products obtained from cells raised in FBS-containing medium is costly and their registration with governmental authorities is very difficult.

Today, many cell lines, adapted to grow in  chemically defined medium not supplemented with any animal derived components are made available to the scientific community through cell banks e.g. “ATCC”, the American Type Cell Culture, http://www.lgcpromochem-atcc.com  “ECACC” the European Collection of Cell Cultures, http://www.ecacc.org.uk   “DSMZ” the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures. http://www.dsmz.de/index.htm An updated overview of serum-free cell lines and serum-free media can be found in the database at www.sefrec.com

Apart from keeping cells growing in culture, FBS is also widely used for their long term storage, i.e. for the cryopreservation of cell lines. Cryopreservation of mammalian cell lines has been and still is an absolute requirement for cell culturists. The freezing and thawing processes are complex and very stressful for cells. A substantial portion of the cryopreserved cells does not survive this treatment. In addition, the surviving cells may, due to the harsh treatment, exhibit a lag phase that delays growth after thawing.