Serum-Free Media

Serum-free media avoid issues with using animal serum by replacing it with appropriate nutritional and hormonal formulations. Serum-free media formulations exist for many primary cultures and cell lines, including recombinant protein producing lines of CHO, various hybridoma cell lines, the insect lines Sf9 and Sf21, and for cell lines that act as hosts for viral production (e.g., 293, VERO, MDCK, MDBK), and others. One of the major advantages of using serum-free media is the ability to make the medium selective for specific cell types by choosing the appropriate combination of growth factors.