Serum Starvation - (Aug/08/2007 )

Hi,

I was wondering what would be the effect of reduced serum on the growth of cells, especially endothelial cells. Will their proliferation rate be hindered.

In our lab we use reduced serum media to grow cancer cell lines and the tumer cells grow fine.

I am not sure how serum deprivation will affect endothelial cells.

Thanks,

Pooja

A reduced serum media will definately slow your endothelial cells down. The typical 10% serum stimulates cells to grow at (or near) a maximum rate. I often keep stocks of cells growing at a 5% just to make them slower so I'm not passaging my cells multiple times between experiments. This works for my non-transformed cell lines but my cancer cell lines aren't effected as much as one of the defining characteristics of a transformed cell is mitogen-stimulation independent division (along with loss of contact inhibition, anchorage dependance, etc.). Cancer cells are known for their ability to grow quickly and many people culture with a reduced serum just to keep up with them... after all you don't want to be splitting them every other day if you can avoid it. Now, a reduced serum media is different than serum deprivation/starvation. Reduced serum keeps them growing and dividing, just at a slower rate whereas serum deprivation is used to synchronize (or enrich) your cells in G0. I use media with just 0.5% serum for 48hrs to synchronize my CHO-K1 cells. The best thing you can do is plate out some wells of your cells and place different wells under different serum percentages and check to see how this effects growth. This way you can get to know this specific cell line and learn how they respond to serum changes.

The purpose of serum is to add growth factors to the media and aid cells in their growth.
Reducing serum, I've found in N2A cells keeps them reduces their division rates.
But, as it was suggested, definitely try various serum levels and see how your cells are affected.

Thank you for the information.

I also asked this to someone, and I got a really vague reply, so thanks for clarifying my doubt.

The gradient technique will be a good way to analyse the effect of different serum concentrations. will let you know how it goes.

Pooja:)

Hi there,

Thanks for replying. I knew that reduction in serum levels would lead to depletion of nutrients, but did not understand why the tumor cells were still going strong!

But I will be studying the effect on endothelial cells.

Thank You,

Pooja:)