Ulrich Dr Steiner

Development of protein-deficient serum-free culture media for adherent cell lines suited for large scale cultivation

Procedures are described for the devlopment of less expensive, protein-deficient serum-free media for the cultivation of mammalian adherent cell lines. Starting with a proteinrich chemically defined, serum-free culture medium, the concentrations of the expensive or highly concentrated proteins, or both, such as bovine serum albumin (BSA), insulin, or transferrin are systematically reduced one after the other until the minimal concentrations are reached at which the cells grow as efficiently as in the initial protein-rich medium formulation. The resulting protein-deficient serum-free media are of interest for an economical, large scale production of natural substances from mammalian cell cultures. The method is described using as an example the human cell line prostate adenocarcinoma. The protein content of a serum-free medium developed for these cells was reduced from originally 1020 mg/l to finally <1 mg/l.