cho cell line adoptation to serum free medium - (Sep/25/2009 )

I am going to adopt my adherent CHO cells growing in serum containing medium to serum free suspension culture, I know there are some commercial medium and protocols for this. I want to know if it is straightforward or troublesome and how long it take to do that.
any help is appreciated.

Changing the growth habits of a cell line is a very drastic step... it will make comparison with the parent line impossible, i.e. your results will not compare to other published results with adherent CHO!

Adapting cells to different mediums is usually not difficult, you just need to slowly substitute the new medium for the old. I would suggest starting at 5 or 10% new medium and leaving the cells in that for a couple of passages, then increasing the percentage of new medium in a similar fashion until the cells are adapted to 100% new medium. During this time you need to keep track of the growth habits (morphology- take pictures, rate of growth, percent of dead cells etc.) so as to ensure your cells are as similar to the parent line as possible.

I don't have any experience making suspension cultures from adherent.