On this page, you will find information on FCS and serum-free media in general.
Why use FCS-free media?
The list below is an overview of literature on the scientific and moral concerns associated with the use of Fetal Calf Serum.
- Gstraunthaler, G., Lindl, T., & van der Valk, J. (2013). A plea to reduce or replace fetal bovine serum in cell culture media. Cytotechnology, 65(5), 791-793.
- Gstraunthaler, G., Lindl, T., & van der Valk, J. (2014). A severe case of fraudulent blending of fetal bovine serum strengthens the case for serum-free cell and tissue culture applications. Alternatives to laboratory animals: ATLA, 42(3), 207.
- Jochems, C. E., Van Der Valk, J. B., Stafleu, F. R., & Baumans, V. (2002). The use of fetal bovine serum: ethical or scientific problem?. ATLA-NOTTINGHAM-, 30(2), 219-228.
- Karnieli, O., Friedner, O. M., Allickson, J. G. et al. (2017). A consensus introduction to serum replacements and serum-free media for cellular therapies.Cytotherapy 19, 155-169.
- Van der Valk, J., Mellor, D., Brands, R., Fischer, R., Gruber, F., Gstraunthaler, G., ... & Thalen, M. (2004). The humane collection of fetal bovine serum and possibilities for serum-free cell and tissue culture. Toxicology in vitro, 18(1), 1-12.
- Van der Valk, J., Brunner, D., De Smet, K., Svenningsen, Å. F., Honegger, P., Knudsen, L. E., ... & Gstraunthaler, G. (2010). Optimization of chemically defined cell culture media–replacing fetal bovine serum in mammalian in vitro methods. Toxicology in vitro, 24(4), 1053-1063.
- Van der Valk, J., Bieback, K., Buta, C., Cochrane, B., Dirks, W., Fu, J., Hickman, J., Hohensee, C., Kolar, R., Liebsch, M., Pistollato, F., Schulz, M., Thieme, D., Weber, T., Wiest, J., Winkler, S. and Gstraunthaler, G. (2018) Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS): Past – Present – Future. ALTEX 35(1) 99-118.
- Van der Valk, Jan (2022) Fetal bovine serum—a cell culture dilemma. Science 375, Issue 6577 • pp. 143-144.
Review articles on FCS-free media
The list below provides review(-like) articles on FCS-free media for further reading.
- Bauman, E., Granja, P. L., & Barrias, C. C. (2018). Fetal bovine serumāfree culture of endothelial progenitor cells—progress and challenges. Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, 12(7)
- Murhammer, D. W. (Ed.). (2007). Baculovirus and insect cell expression protocols (Vol. 388). Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
- Usta, S. N., Scharer, C. D., Xu, J., Frey, T. K., & Nash, R. J. (2014). Chemically defined serum-free and xeno-free media for multiple cell lineages. Annals of translational medicine, 2(10).
- McGillicuddy, N., Floris, P., Albrecht, S. et al.Examining the sources of variability in cell culture media used for biopharmaceutical production.Biotechnol Lett40, 5–21 (2018). https://doi-org.proxy.library.uu.nl/10.1007/s10529-017-2437-8
- Ledur, P. F., Onzi, G. R., Zong, H., & Lenz, G. (2017). Culture conditions defining glioblastoma cells behavior: what is the impact for novel discoveries?.Oncotarget, 8(40), 69185.
Techniques
- Dessels, C., Potgieter, M., & Pepper, M. S. (2016). Making the Switch: Alternatives to Fetal Bovine Serum for Adipose-Derived Stromal Cell Expansion. Frontiers in cell and developmental biology, 4.
- Marigliani, B., Balottin, L. B. L., & Augusto, E. F. P. (2019). Adaptation of mammalian cells to chemically defined media. Current Protocols in Toxicology, 82, e88. doi: 10.1002/cptx.88
- Caron A.L., Biaggio R.T., Swiech K. (2018) Strategies to Suspension Serum-Free Adaptation of Mammalian Cell Lines for Recombinant Glycoprotein Production. In: Picanço-Castro V., Swiech K. (eds) Recombinant Glycoprotein Production. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1674. Humana Press, New York, NY
- Kim, M. (2019) Development of an Evolutionary Algorithm-Guided, High-Dimensional Optimization for Discovery of Serum-Free Media Formulations for Human Primary Cell Expansion. PhD thesis
- Cimino, M., Gonçalves, R. M., Barrias, C. C., & Martins, M. C. L. (2017). Xeno-free strategies for safe human mesenchymal stem/stromal cell expansion: supplements and coatings.Stem cells international, 2017
- Xiao Z., Sabourin M., Piras G., Gorfien S.F. (2014) Screening and Optimization of Chemically Defined Media and Feeds with Integrated and Statistical Approaches. In: Pörtner R. (eds) Animal Cell Biotechnology. Methods in Molecular Biology (Methods and Protocols), vol 1104. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi-org.proxy.library.uu.nl/10.1007/978-1-62703-733-4_9
- Shelton, M., Kocharyan, A., Liu, J., Skerjanc, I. S., & Stanford, W. L. (2016). Robust generation and expansion of skeletal muscle progenitors and myocytes from human pluripotent stem cells.Methods, 101, 73-84.
- Hewlett, G. (1991). Strategies for optimising serum-free media.Cytotechnology, 5(1), 3-14.
- Chary, A. et al. (2022) Maximizing the relevance and reproducibility of A549 cell culture using FBS-free media. Toxicology In Vitro 83.
Cellosaurus: Knowledge resource on cell lines
The Cellosaurus is a knowledge resource on cell lines. It attempts to describe all cell lines used in biomedical research.