We have got less cell confluency (60%) in case of With out phenol red EMEM . WE can not use with phenol red EMEM media as we are performing the effect of Tamoxifen drug on Estrogenicity of cell line.
So what can we do for better confluency of MCF-7 cells in without phenol red media EMEM ?
Phenol red has estrogenic activity, which could stimulate MCF-7's growth (maybe thats why you have less confluency w/o phenol red). Have you considered using media supplemented with stripped (= estrogens removed) serum? That should be sufficient for your testing..
We are using simply Fetal Bovine Serum . Tell me about Stripped serum.
Stripped serum alias Dextran-charcoal treated serum (DCT-FBS) is used for supplementing media with necessarry nutrients, but with minimal effect of serum hormones (there are plenty of them in non stripped serum)
"Charcoal stripped fetal bovine serum has been absorbed with activated carbon that removes non-polar material such as lipophilic (lipid-related) materials (virus, certain growth factors, hormones and cytokines) regardless of molecular weight but has little effect on salts, glucose, amino acids, etc."
Basically, we maintain our cells in medium with full FBS, and for exposure (estrogenic assays) we use medium with stripped FBS.
I hope this helps.
Regards
Jakub
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