I am currently taking care of Plasmodium falciparum in vitro culture and in order for me to keep them alive, I was wondering how and when should I feed them if you have any protocol to advice me. I have access to complete media and RPMI.
Hello,
I am working with Plasmodium falciparum for years now. We are using in my lab a classical RPMI additionned with a glucose-hypoxhantine solution, gentamicin and human plasma.
When we have to maintain culture alive, we renew the culture media after 3-4 days. But the maximum parasitaemia is 6-7%.
Dear Silvia,
We are using a method adapted from Trager & Jansen, 1976. But I think it will be helpful for Linda
Dear Gilles and Linda,
You can use 20% serum in order to achieve higher parasitemia, but is crucial to add fresh erythrocytes to avoid parasite death.
You can use the method suggested by Silvia Di Santi. You should change the media every 24hr. If the parasitemia is high, split some and keep it below 5%, we usually keep it around 2-3% unless we want to perform any antimalarial assay. Most importantly, you should check the parasitemia level using microscopy every 2-3 days intervals at least and provide fresh RBCs while splitting. For higher parasitemia, you can use inactivated serum or plasma from AB+ donors.
Below is our article for a brief explanation and synchronization method as well:
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