Dear Researchers:
What factors to consider when deciding between MEM vs. DMEM culture medium to grows HEK293 cells?
The ATCC recommends DMEM, but there is a vast amount of literature supporting growing HEK cells in MEM.
Thanks for your answers in advance!
Hello
In our lab used DMEM also , as you said in alot of literature supporting use MEM with 2 mM L-glutamine and complemented with Earle's BSS (1.5 g/L Na-bicarbonate, 0.1 mM non-essential amino acids, 1.0 mM Na-pyruvate) + 10% FHS will do , and the cells are growing very well In two medium . anyway , DMEM is basically MEM with additional amino acids , vitamins and proteins to prevent the adhesion of the cells to the sides of the flask .
Jörg Fiedle has given you a good advice " look at the composition of your media and compare it with the ATCC recommended media " and choice the best for your experimental .
Good Luck
http://www.labome.com/method/Cell-Culture-Media-A-Review.html
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_do_we_choose_culture_medium_type_DMEM_MEM_RPMI2/1
I agree with the previous comments. DMEM is richer in a variety of nutrients than MEM and is a very good choice for many cell types. Cells will grow faster and deplete the medium slower in DMEM. You should also consider Opti-MEM which, in my experience, is even better than DMEM.
Hi All, sorry about the delay in replying. Thanks for your inputs.Those are very helpful. As of now I use MEM (cheap)
HEK cells will grow fine and very similar at 5-10% FBS in both MEM and DMEM.
The amount of all basic nutrients in more than sufficient already in MEM for HEK cells to grow to full confluence. DMEM essentially has a doubled amount of most amino acids and vitamins relative to MEM.
(By the way, in low serum conditions, the high levels of amino acids/vitamins in DMEM may even be inhibitory but it's unimportant during regular growth at 10% FBS.)
(In comparison, F & MCDB series of media apparently have too low levels of some essential amino acids, so HEK cells will stop growing in them at low density).
However, the following two components may need to be looked at:
1) glucose
You may need to add more glucose to both MEM and DMEM if it's the original version (5.5 mM glucose = physiological concentration).15-20 mM glucose will be better if you want to grow your cells to high densities, otherwise they can deplete glucose when approaching to confluence. The commonly sold DMEM has already 25 mM glucose while commonly sold MEM usually has 5.5 mM glucose. 16 mM glucose seems to be sufficient (but not necessarily necessary).
2) bicarbonate
At high densities, when not far to confluence, HEK cells will acidify the media. If they are grown to this stage (e.g. during routine culture between passages), you may wish to use 3.7 g/L bicarbonate in the media rather than 2.2 g/L. When using 5% CO2 incubator this will give a starting pH 7.6 rather than 7.4, so the media will turn yellow later. However, the more physiological pH 7.4 may be better for the initial growth before cells start to acidify the media. The commonly sold liquid version of DMEM usually has 3.7 g/L while for the liquid MEM it's usually 2.2 g/L.
Also HEK cells will grow fine in McCoy's 5A or 1:1 mixtures of DMEM with F/MCDB series media (e.g. DMEM/F12).
MEM is sufficient for cell growth but DMEM is good for cell growth because of high percentage of vitamins and glucose as compared to MEM.
And time efficiency is good in DMEM.
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