Lastly, the large demand for FBS has led to adulterated or counterfeit products on the market. The wrong FBS can introduce a degree of irreproducibility due to the variations from lot-to-lot. In addition, FBS has been notorious for introducing variability into cell culture systems. Naturally this lead to a ‘mandate’ to remove FBS from media due to its non-human (i.e. The advent of cell therapy has created a need for cell media that is free from as many immune response eliciting substances as possible. It would appear that while there is a lack of consensus on the definition of ‘serum-free’, the term exists because scientists are looking for certain attributes in their media.The term was born from an urgent need to find an alternative to the broadly adopted FBS for cell therapy. This post was the root of how the conversation came about and why no one really knows what serum-free means. While others simply sided with “defined” as their definition of “serum-free”. Some agreed on no serum at all as their definition with some conditional variations such as serum-derived components being fair game or no animal source as a restriction.Īnother defined “serum-free” as free of FBS. However, when the same question was asked on the BioInformant LinkedIn page, there was no specific answer that stood out as the clear winner. Poll time! What does the term “serum free” mean to you? Choose an option below or leave your answer in comments: When the question was asked on Twitter the results leaned towards a cell culture media that contains “no animal or human serum.” So what does serum-free mean to you? The Results Are In Does it mean free of FBS? Or does it mean xeno-free – absent of all animal components? Is it defined or chemically defined? One thing was obvious: the definition of serum-free was different across various companies in the cell culture space. The question was brought up after examining current “serum-free” products on the market. If you follow BioInformant you may have seen the poll question in your feed, but if you don’t, the results may be surprising. Was the rest of the scientific community as confused as we were? Does anyone know what “serum-free” means? Cade Hildreth of BioInformant, the world’s largest stem cell industry blog, set out to find the answer. Is it clever marketing or is there a scientific definition to the term? By the end of lunch, the table of cell culture media experts could not come to a consensus on how the term was defined. What does serum-free mean? The question was brought up during a lunch at the World Stem Cell Summit in January.
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