In order to grow the cells in culture, we need to fulfil the requirements of cell culture. The cell culture setting is essentially important to make sure that our cell can grow well in certain condition. There are many criteria of cancer cell culture that must be met. Today, we will discuss one of the major requirements for cell culture which is media.
Media as Requirement of Cell Culture
As we all know, culture media is playing a major role on providing the nutrients to the cells. Without the nutrients, the cell cannot be grown. Basically, the basal media consists of amino acids, carbohydrates, vitamins, and salts. Sometimes, the basal media will be added in with serum, growth factors and even hormones if those components are necessary for the cell growth.
If tracing back to the history, one of the first well-known culture media was Eagle’s basal medium (BME). This media was developed by Harry Eagle. In his cancer research, he tried to find out the nutrients that are needed to support both normal and malignant cell. Subsequently, this medium was improved and modified to produce Eagle’s minimum essential medium (MEM) and Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM). Those modifications were to fulfil the demand of different cells.
In addition, in order to grow the hemopoietic precursors, Iscove’s modified Dulbecco medium (IMDM) was produced which contains selenium, additional amino acids and vitamins, sodium pyruvate, and HEPES buffer. For cell competence affecting factors study, the Glasgow minimum essential medium (GMEM) was developed. It contains a 2fold increased concentration of individual amino acids and vitamins if compare to BME.
In 1950, Medium 199 had been introduced by Morgan and his colleagues. This medium is good to support the growth of explanted tissue. It is more advanced than BME as it has broad applicability for culturing many different cell types. Next, the CMRL 1066 medium was developed at the Connaught Medical Research Institute. It was a less complex version of Medium 199. It worked well in growing the cell in serum-free condition. Yet, it can be added with serum to induce growing on other cell types too. On the other hand, Waymouth’s medium was one of the best medium for serum-free growth.
Moreover, Ham’s Nutrient Mixtures F10 and F12 were developed. These medium were initiated for the growth of Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells either with or without serum. Next, Ham and his co-workers continued to produce the MCDB series of media for serum-free growth of individual cell lines with low levels of fetal bovine serum (FBS) protein.
Finally, Moore and his colleagues were successfully to develop the RPMI 1640. This is a well-known medium until now. It is vigorously used in many types of cell culture and cancer research. In fact, I am using RPMI 1649 as my culture media in cancer research too.
In conclusion, culture media is one of the indispensible components in cancer cell culture. I hope that this post can really give you an idea about the culture media so that we can discuss more details in future.
(Reference: “Cancer Cell Culture” by Simon P. Langdon)
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