I've been culturing T cells for the good part of 8 years now and have always used standard RPMI supplemented with serum and 2ME.
I was told recently (in a review process) that it " is generally standard in the T cell field" to culture cells with 1 mM sodium pyruvate.
RPMI, unlike DMEM, does not contain sodium pyruvate. Any thoughts on this?
I usually add sodium pyruvate, HEPES, Non-Essential Amino Acid (NEAA) and Glutamine. All these factors help to improve cell viability by providing better buffering and additional sources of energy, but most of the researchers do not use/are aware of these factors. My personal opinion is that sodium pyruvate should be part of a general standard, but it is not. You might want to repeat one of your experiment and show that you get the same result with and without sodium pyruvate. Also, search the literature for similar experiments done without sodium pyruvate and show the reviewer that sodium pyruvate does not change the final output. FYI, serum is usually a much, much, much bigger variable than sodium pyruvate in determine T cell response/growth/signaling. For future experiments, I advice you to repeat your data in X-Vivo 15 (a culture media without serum) to be sure that your results are not influenced by your specific media (serum source).
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