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Serum-Free and Animal-Free Cell Culture
The elimination of serum and animal components in culture media is an important step towards a defined cell culture process. Defined media contain only products and materials with known chemical identity such as small molecules, salts, and fatty acids. These media may also include recombinant proteins that are not produced in animal systems.
Incorporating serum-free or animal-free media will benefit your cell culture process in several ways:
- Improving consistency by reducing variability in media composition
- Simplifying compliance with regulatory guidelines
- Simplifying comparability testing if raw material changes are required
- Reducing time-to-market for your cell product
If you’re not ready for serum-free or animal-free culture, visit our Cell Culture Reagents page for classical media, serum products, and basement membrane extracts.
Serum-Free Cell Culture
Serum-free cell culture media will improve your experimental consistency by reducing the number of unidentified culture components as well as the effects of unknown levels of vitamins, hormones, and growth factors. In addition, serum-free media
- Reduce the risk of potential viral contaminants that may be present in the serum
- Reduce the cost and inconvenience of batch testing sera
- Eliminate uncertainty about global supply fluctuations
- Simplify purification and downstream processing
These media components do not require supplementation with fetal bovine serum (fetal calf serum; FBS) to support cell survival, proliferation, or function:
- N-2 MAX and N21-MAX supplements for NPC derivation, maintenance, and differentiation
- StemXVivo™ Serum-Free Human MSC Expansion Media and Freezing Media
- StemXVivo Serum-Free Human T Cell Base Media
- StemXVivo Serum-Free Tumorsphere Media
- StemXVivo Serum-Free Dendritic Cell Base Media
- Cultrex™ Basement Membrane Extracts and ECM Proteins
- Human Methylcellulose Serum-Free Enriched and Base Media
- Serum-free methylcellulose media for hematopoietic stem cell culture
- ITS media supplement for cell culture under low serum conditions
Read more about developing serum-free cell culture workflows.
Cultrex UltiMatrix BME – A Versatile Matrix for Organoid and Stem Cell Culture at R&D Systems
Effects of Defined and Undefined Extracellular Matrices on Human iPSC Expansion and Differentiation at R&D Systems
Optimizing Organoid Culture Conditions at R&D Systems
Xeno-Free and Animal-Free Cell Culture
Animal-free media and their components are never exposed to potential contamination by animal products at any point during their manufacturing. In addition to its importance for robust culture processes, adopting animal-free materials also reduces the use of animals in reagent production. These materials support translational research by
- Eliminating risk of contamination with mammalian pathogens
- Reducing manufacturing risk by reducing batch failure
- Eliminating variability due to trace animal components
Read our complete Animal-Free Statement to learn about our dedicated labs, SOPs, QA protocols for deviations, and certification of BSE and TSE inactivation. The production of animal component-free reagents utilizes animal-free equipment and raw materials outside of our dedicated animal-free laboratories.
New! ExCellerate™ GMP iPSC Expansion Medium
New! ExCellerate™ GMP iPSC Expansion Medium
- Completely animal-free
- All-in-one formulation
- Stable cell integrity over long term culture
- Equivalent RUO version available
Animal-Free Cytokines and Growth Factors
Animal-Free Cytokines and Growth Factors
- Preclinical and GMP grades
- All production lots tested against master lot to control for assay variability
- Same biological activity as our research grade proteins
The Importance of Serum- and Animal Component-Free Media
The Importance of Serum- and Animal Component-Free Media
Read this article for a discussion covering:
- Cell culture media: getting it right from the start
- Advantages of using animal component-free media
- Where are we now with serum-free alternatives?
CEPT Cocktail for Improved Cell Survival
Improve stem cell survival with our small molecule CEPT cocktail. A combination of 4 small molecules, Chroman 1, Emricasan, Lyophilized Polyamine Supplement and Trans-ISRIB, the CEPT cocktail enhances the viability of stem cells during passaging, single cell cloning, gene-editing, cryopreservation, and differentiation and can be used in the manufacture of organoids for use in disease modeling or drug screening.
Specialty Cell Culture
Different lineages of cells require unique media compositions for the cells to proliferate, maintain viability, and retain their correct phenotypes and functions. The following pages provide a wider look into culture media components, differentiation kits, and characterization kits for these specialty cell culture applications. More can be learned from R&D Systems, a Bio-Techne brand, in the links below.
Custom Cell Culture Manufacturing
Let us help you optimize and standardize your media production and testing. We can save you time and headaches by expediting media production, developing optimized media formulations, and performing specialty media testing.
Our Custom Cell Culture Media Manufacturing and Services team at R&D Systems will work with you on optimizing media and supplement formulation and production, custom labeling, and functional assays for the cell types in your process.
Website Resources
- ExCellerate Serum-Free and Animal-Free Cell Expansion Media
- Cell Culture Reagents
- Stem Cells
- Organoids and 3D Culture
- Recombinant Proteins
- Liquid Cytokines
- Small Molecules & Peptides
- Cell and Gene Therapy
- Bioprocessing
- COVID-19
- Interactive Cell Markers Tool at R&D Systems
Literature
- Enhance Your TIL Expansion with ExCellerate T Cell Media Application Note
- The Organoid Culture Handbook
- Evolution of Cell Culture Model Systems eBook at R&D Systems
- T Cell-Based Therapies eBook
- Stem Cell Protocols at R&D Systems
- Immune Cell Protocols at R&D Systems
- Neural Cell Culturing Guide
- Neural Cell Culturing Protocols at R&D Systems
Cell culture requires understanding the nutrient and growth factor requirements of the cell population under study. This knowledge is valuable for the optimization of base media formulation and supplements including growth factors, cytokines, hormones, small molecules, and amino acids. Serum, such as fetal bovine serum (FBS), can supply unidentified factors which may be required for cell growth. The use of chemically defined media minimizes exposure of cultured cells to unidentified factors. Certified xeno-free, animal-free, or GMP grades of cell culture media are important for applications such as cell and gene therapy which involve human patient treatment. Well optimized cell culture media maintain the desired cell phenotype, robust proliferation, and high viability.
Bio-Techne provides high quality cell culture reagents for research and cell manufacturing. We develop and manufacture cell culture and cryopreservation media, serum, defined media supplements, bioactive growth factors and small molecules, hydrogels, extracellular matrices, and basement membrane extracts for cell culture attachment.
