I wonder why you want to culture platelets, they don´t divide. You can culture megakaryocytes instead.

If you mean storing platelets rather than culturing them, then you are looking for one of the Holy Grails of transfusion medicine. As Nilo correctly points out they are end stage cell fragments derived from megakaryocytes, don't have a nucleus and therefore don't divide. They retain some mRNA and have ribosomes though so they can continue to synthesise proteins. They also endocytose and store plasma proteins such as fibrinogen so don't underestimate these little rascal cell fragments.

Platelets only last about 5 days post platelet preparation in terms of being useful for transfusion - they are usually prepared by plateletpheresis -  and even then have to stored at room temperature (chilling caps receptors and they aggregate) and left in a transfusion bag on a rocker.

DMEM and RPMI for storage medium are big no-nos because they contain calcium and magnesium. Platelets love to aggregate in the presence of physiological calcium. It's worth a mention that platelet storage media contain stuff like citrate (109mM if memory serves) to chelate most of the calcium.

There has been plenty of research into extending the shelf life of transfusion platelets with not much progress on extending their shelf life (that's not being dismissive of what is a worthy research topic - it's just incredibly difficult). If you type "platelet storage" into PubMed you'll get 3,999 hits. Find and a good recent review article and start from there.

If you do find a viable way of extending platelet storage time I'm sure you'll attract a lot of commercial interest particularly from the military. Good luck.

As Dr. Nilo and Dr.Barry mentioned platelets lacks nucleus, so trying them to culture is difficult task, One can store it for maximum 4 days  at blood banking condition. For research purpose It always advisable to use fresh blood to prepare platelets by differential centrifugation/ gel filtration and isolated platelets should be used within 3 to 4 hours of preparation (to get good response with agonist). Some studies shows long term storage of purified platelets releases some pro-inflammatory proteins too. If you can culture the platelets in laboratory that will be a good news for thrombocytopenic patients as well.............Good luck.

Thank you all for the kind suggestions .. actually i might have used wrong term "culturing" but my aim is to set an experiment with the platelets. However my particular concern was due to the fact that my experimental time points are up to 72 hours. If I can store the platelets in cell culture condition for up to that long?? and if not DMEM and RPMI and then can I use M199 media??

Glad to have been of help, Ishani. M199 will also have calcium and magnesium in it - try using blood banking techniques as a start - you should be good for a 72 hour experiment - or as Vijay suggested prepare them by centrifugation or gel filtration.

The ARCBS uses SSP+ (MacoPharma) with approximately 30% carryover deriving them from whole blood donations using the buffy coat technique. In my own work isolating platelets and storing them in a Ca2+ free Hepes buffered modified tyrod'es buffer containing some glucose (5mM) has yielded decent responses up to 72hr for various in vitro experiments I was running. SSP+ is good however it contains no glucose however provides citrate for CAC metabolism. If you are wanting to measure activation / aggregation you might want to considering re-calcifying the media however this has not been useful for me. 

Leaving platelets in plasma isn't a good idea due their metabolic turnover, subsequent production of lactate and a drop of pH. This is why PAS has been implemented to prevent a drop in pH.

I would recommend HMTB with some glucose and some residual plasma.