FCS in Serum free medium for better Cell Adhesion? - (Feb/23/2014 )

Hi everyone,

I wanted to ask if it is possible to introduce FCS into the serum-free medium culture (for primary keratinocytes) just after passage or when the cells are first propagated in a flask for better cell attachment . I just want to make use of the ECM proteins in the serum. So after a few hours or a day (when cells are well attached) I would switch medium to 100% serum-free again. Because without serum or coating, there are a lot of keratinocytes floating in the flasks, and the trick with the short serum incubation seems like a simple an quite effective method to avoid this.

Thank you!
NazGoole

Generally, the purpose of using serum-free media is to avoid having the cells or cell-derived final product being exposed to unknown proteins or factors from FCS during any stage. If this is not a concern, then your method is great. Otherwise, you could try using different surface treated tissue culture flasks ( ex: lysine-coated surface etc.) that aid in cell attachment.