I am planning to culture human mammary epithelial cells bought from Lonza. Unfortunately a lot of the media+growth supplements these companies sell (including Lonza, PromoCell, ATCC) significantly reduce the shelf-life of the media from 2 weeks to 1 month once the media is mixed with the supplements. If there is any way to avoid this or if someone has grown these cells with an alternate, more long lasting and simpler culture medium, I would appreciate details and recipe. Thanks much.
Hi Aditi,
It will be difficult for someone to tell the best composition for the media for culturing HMECs. The media available from Lonza, ATCC, Life Technologies, Stem Cell Technologies, PromoCell all are equally good and being widely used.
To increase the shelf life and preserving quality of the media I would suggest preparing small quantities of complete media containing serum and growth factors and do not store the complete media for next use (That's what I do). I make aliquots of 25 and 50 ml sterile incomplete culture media and store at 2-4 deg C. I also sterile aliquot all other components including serum in small quantities after thawing once (suitable for preparing 25 and 50 ml complete media) and store at -20 deg C and only thaw required amount of all supplements to make a specific quantity of complete media on demand for the cell culture purpose.
Best-
Ok that sounds like a good idea. I was looking for cheaper, easier to make alternatives with what I already have in lab since I read some papers where they used RPMI1640 with 10% serum and strep-pen like they do for fibroblasts. But I guess its best to go with recommended media. Thanks.
- Badges
- Science topic