We have used horse serum before in specific cell culture protocols like myocytes differentiation but never in cell culture maintenance
Hello Rosario Serrano
Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is a widely used growth supplement in invitro culturing of animal and human cells, tissues and organs, notably due to the occurrence of abundant micro- and macronutrients, along with a rich array of growth factors such as insulin-like growth factors, transforming growth factors, and fibroblast growth factors, which promote cell proliferation and survival.
Compared to horse serum, FBS is richer in growth factors and contains low level of γ-globulin (a cell growth inhibitor). The serum contains approximately 1800 proteins, and it also has more than 4000 metabolites. In addition to that, FBS helps to improve the pH buffering capacity of the medium and reduce the physical damage caused by pipette manipulation and stirring.
On the other hand, horse serum has a higher protein concentration than FBS, but lower trace element content. It exhibits lower growth factor and higher immunoglobulin levels than FBS. Thus, it is often used as an additive for cell culture media which already contains these trace elements from FBS, and has proved to be particularly suitable for culturing neural cells, hematopoietic stem cells, muscle cells and osteoblasts.
I use horse serum only for certain cell culture applications. For instance, to differentiate C2C12 cells, one may have to slow down proliferation of cells and switch to differentiation state. This may be accomplished by supplementing the medium with horse serum instead of FBS because horse serum has a lower content of growth factors and trace elements. So, using a much lower percentage of horse serum (2%-3%) will ensure that proliferation is slowed down considerably.
So, even though horse serum may be more cost-effective than FBS, you cannot use it for cell culture maintenance.
Best.
Yes, it is possible to use horse serum in cell culture instead of FBS. The optimization of its percentage is required as per the type of cell and requirement, usually, 5-10% is sufficient for proliferation and differentiation. However, when compared to FBS it has more immunoglobins & protein and less growth factor.
Yes, I agree for proliferation and differentiation. However, only HS cannot be used for routine cell culture maintenance.
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