In terms of cell culture media and other consumables, what's the cheapest eukaryotic cell to culture?
FBS is expensive, serum-free alternatives for cells that require FBS are even more expensive.
Even HeLa cells require 10% FBS.
Are there any cell lines out there that can be grown for cheaper than F12 + FBS?
Edit: Aside from yeast. Preferably vertebrate. Sorry yeast biologists, I won't forget about you again!
Hi. I don't think there a major differences in costs for cultivating 'standard cancer cell lines', no matter if it's HeLA, HEK, HepG2 or whatever. In the easiest (and cheapest) setting you'll always need some kind of basal culture medium (DMEM; MEM, F12, RPMI...) and FBS. Among the basal media DMEM and MEM should be cheapest, but price differences may be neglected. FBS concentration may be reduced to 5% or even 2% (if the growth speed dosen’t matter for you).
I don't know what you are looking for, but maybe you can save costs, when you are going for a non-adherent cell line, cause you won't need Trypsin for subculturing the cells. The use of 10x concentrate of basal media can also contribute to saving costs.
The price of FBS could vary significantly. It is very important to choose the best FBS product that is suitable for your needs. You can also reduce serum levels in several stages allowing one or two passages at each stage for the cells to adapt 10% to 7.5% to 5%.
“Cheaper” alternatives:
1. Bovine calf serum is an appropriate and cheaper alternative to FBS especially for amniotic fluid cells and some robust cells, such as HSC-3.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0178960
2. Adding the supplement Zap-SR (InVitria) can effectively reduce the amount of serum needed to propagate any given cell type (to 90%). Using an optimized level of Zap-SR and serum is actually cheaper than using the same basal medium that contains 10% serum.
https://us.vwr.com/assetsvc/asset/en_US/id/20259951/contents
3. BSA or HSA as serum replacers also could reduce the culture cost.
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