We bought 200 bottle of FBS from Sigma. When I was doing the VLP and virus production I go through a bottle every day or 2. I noticed some other assays were not working as well as they had been, but it wasn't until I stopped using the FBS so fast that I figured out what was happening. The FBS was contaminated I'm guessing with a fungus of some kind because it grows pretty slowly. I proved that it was contaminated by taking a sealed bottle out and leaving it at room temp for a few days. The still sealed bottle clearly has growth in it. But Sigma is really not being responsive about this at all. I emailed them pictures and the sales rep took 4 days just to call me back. Then said she would get back to me in 15-30 min and never called again. So right now our very small lab is out thousands and thousands of dollars, and the last 6 months of research is basically unuseable.
How do I go about getting Sigma to reimburse us some of the money we lost (I think they should have to pay at least a portion of all of the wasted reagents and time, not just the FBS). Is there a legal course of action I should take?
I understand your concerns, but be mindful of natural precipitation of serum components with temperature variances...
I understand your concerns, but be mindful of natural precipitation of serum components with temperature variances...
Indeed... seeing a precipitate isn't actually a sign of contamination, it's a sign of precipitation of something. Might be fungus, might not be. You'd have to do more testing to really demonstrate a contamination.
As for a legal case, I suspect you're out of luck. Just looking at the bottle, it claims to be sterile filtered, but doesn't have any actual guarantee of sterility - if it was contaminated with something that slipped through a filter, it wouldn't be guaranteed to be clean. Further, what's the expiration date? I see only 0822 - is that this year, or last, or some other year entirely?
Finally: have you tried your experiments with a different source of FBS? It's entirely possible that this batch just has a high level of some compound that your experiment doesn't like. There are variations between cows, after all.
The appearance and presence of precipitates in FBS can vary based on the initial thawing procedure. Check the manufacturer instructions for thawing, and ensure that they were followed. Try to use within the expiration date, avoiding freeze/thaw cycles and frequent temperature fluctuations.
I agree with Mauricio, If you thaw out your FBS slowly at RT or lower, you could probably get cryoprecipitates, which have nothing to contamination.
Its just protein aggregates.
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