A serum-free defined medium capable of supporting growth of four established human prostatic carcinoma cell lines.

This paper describes a serum-free defined medium (Gc) that was initially designed to support growth of the human prostatic carcinoma cell line LNCaP. Our studies indicate that this medium formulation is capable of supporting short-term, long-term, and clonal growth of the LNCaP cell line. Component deletion experiments have shown that the three most critical components for LNCaP short-term growth are insulin, triiodothyronine (T3), and fetuin. Additionally, this medium was found to support short-term and clonal growth of three other human prostatic carcinoma cell lines, DU 145, PC-3, and ALVA-31. The availability of such a medium should aid in the distinction of the regulatory factors involved in growth and differentiation of malignant prostatic epithelium.