Autoclavable low cost serum-free cell culture media: the growth of established cell lines and production of viruses.

Five cell lines (BSC-1, CHO, Balb/c 3T3, HeLa, and KB) have been grown in serum-free media for several months with regular schedules of media changing and subculturing. The medium found to be successful in all cases was MEM-alpha (without the ribosides and deoxyribosides) supplemented with 1% bacteropeptone, although simple MEM (minimum essental medium (Eagle) with bacteropeptone (BP) gave fairly good growth in the case of BSC-1 and 3T3 cells. The addition of insulin was necessary for CHO, 3T3, HeLa, and KB cells. Only the BSC-1 cells grew exclusively as a stationary suspensions and the 3T3 cells growing as a combination of monalayer and suspension depending on the age of the culture and the nature of the growth surface. SV40 was produced in BSC-1 cells grown and infected in the MEM-alpha, bactopeptone medium and adenovirus-2 was produced in spinners of HeLa and KB cells grown in MEM-alpha, bactopeptone, PVP-360, and insulin. The yield of virus and infectivity of the viruses produced were about the same as those produced in conventional serum-containing systems.