How well human transformed cell lines grow in different commercial sources of fetal bovine serum

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Since the advent of mammalian cell culture, there have been strong scientific, economic, and ethical reasons for finding better sources of growth factors than supplements to media with fetal bovine serum (FBS). More recently, concerns about virus transmission into human stem cells grown in supplements with FBS have reignited the need from a medical safety perspective. However, FBS remains unsurpassed for allowing human cells to differentiate and proliferate as they do in vivo. As studies into cell-cell interactions document, like co-culturing of epithelial cells and enteric neurons, the source of FBS can make a big difference in the experimental results. This paper offers data on two human cell lines which model the enteric nervous system and we make suggestions to the FBS industry in hopes they can at least minimize the lot-to-lot variability in FBS and improve the consistency of the results from the scientific viewpoint.

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