I want to know if there are any differences between FBS and newborn calf serum for using in hybridoma
Hello Hossam Ashour
Newborn calf serum originates from 3 to 10-day old calves. It contains a somewhat higher proportion of proteins and immunoglobulins, but fewer growth factors. With proper cell adaptation, it has been shown to perform very well in cell culture applications where routine cell growth and cell culture maintenance is the objective. It is used for routine maintenance of select cell lines.
Though newborn calf serum is often cost-effective alternative to FBS, it may not be a good choice where development resources are limited. The culture system will be a little more challenging to design. Newborn calf serum is useful in applications where the cell line is more robust.
Best.
Malcolm Nobre do you think it can replace the FBS effectivly in hybridoma media
"do you think it can replace the FBS effectivly in hybridoma media?"
I'd test in parallel to get insights into suitability and performance. Do not change abruptly, as the cells might need some time to adapt to changes in growth factors.
Hossam Ashour
I agree with Wolfgang Schechinger I have a suggestion.
Why don’t you use FBS that is hybridoma qualified? It is ideally suited for culturing hybridoma and myeloma cells. Such type of FBS is screened to identify lots that offer optimal performance. Hybridoma qualified lots show superior growth promotion, exceptional clonal growth at limiting dilution and a lack of cytotoxicity during growth studies.
Hybridomas are over all very costly (regarding time, resources and manpower), serum is only a part of the package. So I'd be very cautious to risk a project by trying to save a little at the materials side.
Even with "normal" cells, we'd usually test several lots of FBS and then reserve a 2 years supply, just to make sure that there is no serum related trouble endangering the project.
There are alternatives to maintaining hybridomas: rescue the relevant cDNAs and express them in other cell lines which are easier to maintain, or even resort to polyclonals, for scalability raised in larger animals or in chickens, esp. if your AB is a peptide antibody (i.e. you have a short epitope).
Malcolm Nobre
Wolfgang Schechinger
Thank you for your valuable answers
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Molecular Cell Biology
- Culture Cells
- Cell Line