12/07/2007 - Medicult, a Danish company best known for supplying products for use in fertility clinics, has developed a protein-free cell culture medium that could cut out problems associated with current media.
The new product - called SSR - performs as well as current products in growing stem cells, but should avoid variation between growth batches and make stem cell culture more reliable and reproducible.
In essence, the key to the SSR formulation developed by Medicult is a fully synthetic replacement for human serum albumin (HSA), which is included in all culture media used to cultivate human stem cells at present.
HSA is derived from human serum and fulfils a valuable function in protecting fragile growing cells, but also has disadvantages. For example, it can often harbour trace amounts of growth factors and other elements that can influence the growth of cells, and this can mean that the growth of one batch of cells will differ from another even if carried out under the same conditions. There is no chance that this can occur with Medicult's SSR formulation, according to the firm's CEO, Jesper Funding Andersen.
The new product - called SSR - performs as well as current products in growing stem cells, but should avoid variation between growth batches and make stem cell culture more reliable and reproducible.
In essence, the key to the SSR formulation developed by Medicult is a fully synthetic replacement for human serum albumin (HSA), which is included in all culture media used to cultivate human stem cells at present.
HSA is derived from human serum and fulfils a valuable function in protecting fragile growing cells, but also has disadvantages. For example, it can often harbour trace amounts of growth factors and other elements that can influence the growth of cells, and this can mean that the growth of one batch of cells will differ from another even if carried out under the same conditions. There is no chance that this can occur with Medicult's SSR formulation, according to the firm's CEO, Jesper Funding Andersen.