What do you think is the importance of having serum free and/or animal free media in clinical stem cell manufacturing?

This question is part of the following Ask The Expert session:

Clinical Stem Cell Manufacturing

Answered by:

Ronnda Bartel, Ph.D.

Company: Vericel

Job Title: Chief Scientific Officer

Answer

Animal-free, chemically defined media would be the ideal choice for all stem cell manufacturing from the standpoint of consistency and control of materials. However, not all cells can be expanded and/or differentiated without serum or other animal derived materials. The use of animal derived materials is acceptable with the appropriate sourcing of materials and testing but most groups developing cell based therapies are working to minimize or remove serum and other animal proteins from their manufacturing process where possible.

Next Question:

In my past I spent a great deal of time scaling up primary muscle and neuronal cell lines for gene expression studies. This requires some specialized techniques, and often some creativity, to maintain them in an undifferentiated state and to differentiate them on command. Coaxing primary lines to maintain the capability to differentiate over many passages was a challenge. I find myself wondering if the challenges seen with stem cells today, especially in scale up are similar to those that were present in growing differentiative cell lines more than 20 years ago. Do you feel that, as an industry, we are combining the lessons learned from work with differentiative cultures and large scale up of mammalian cell lines effectively?

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