I'm planning to start hippocampal slice culture and read that the media requires 20% horse serum. Since I dont have Horse serum readily available, I wanted to know whether any alternative exists. I have access to Fetal Calf Serum, Goat Serum, Fetal Bovine Serum and Donkey Serum.
Additionally, I was thinking could I use adult mouse serum?
First of all you have to try FBS. Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) is the ideal cell growth supplement and generally preferred over other types of cell culture sera. Its high levels of nutrients and optimal combination of growth factors makes Fetal Bovine Serum the most effective cell growth promoter for virtually any cell culture system. In addition, the significantly lower content of antibodies compared to adult and newborn sera minimizes the risk of antibody cross reaction with cells in culture.
Thanks Onur, as you say I have to check with FBS, which I'm planning to do. I was wondering whether anyone had already tried it before. Since we've tried culturing HUEC and EAT cells with FBS as alternative and they do show some degree of stress and increase in floaters.
Also, I've checked the differences between FBS and HS are that HS has a higher protein and growth factor content as opposed to FBS. However I doubt whether sera provides nutrients, I was under the impression that it provides growth factors and co-factors like vitamins etc. and the media provided the nutrients.
As you say, adult sera does interfere due to Ab cross reactivity, however which is why I asked whether mouse sera heat inactivated can be used in the organotypic tissue culture instead of HS.
Hi Mayank, did you have any luck with this? I'm trying to establish organotypic slice cultures in South Africa - and annoyingly there is some sort of import ban on horse serum at the moment. Did FBS work for you?
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