MCF 7 - (Apr/01/2010 )

Hi,
I am growing MCF 7 Cells. Ive subcultured them around 8 times now. They looked happy all this while, but since the last time I subcultured them, they look a little diffrent. They usually spread out evenly. Now they seem to have string like projections and some of them get detached on their own(If they are dead cells, then there is too many of them). I tried to subculture thme to see what happens, and most of the cells got detached when I rinsed them with PBS! I have no clue whats happening. Any help is appreciated and thanks for your time !

Aks

There are any number of things that could be causing this - the usual candidates are over-confluence before subculture, wrong medium (MCF-7 require insulin), and contamination.