Challenges in Brewing a Robust Medium

Technology advance in Human embryonic stem cells (hES) and induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPS) have created tremendous breakthroughs in regenerative medicine, drug discovery, and life science research.

In today's cell culture laboratory, tweaking the composition of commercial ES or iPS medium is oftentimes necessary to suit each research project. However, sourcing customized medium from the vendor typically involves lengthy negotiation with medium producers.

And how about brewing hES or hiPS medium in house? One choice is to start from the Essential 8 medium (E8), and since its recipe is published in 2005 (ref 1.), one can tune the composition accordingly.

A major issue with the E8 medium is its robustness in a stressed cell culture situation. For example, one might find low yields in applications such as single-cell cloning, patient-derived iPS, or CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing.

Several growth factors and chemicals can be added as the supplement to enhance the E8 medium, and they are mostly available as recombinant forms and with high purity.

Could Albumin Help?

Recently, several advanced ES/iPS culturing medium containing albumin have emerged (ref. 2), and the possible mechanism of Albumin in these products versus the Essential 8 which lacks albumin, is also reported (ref. 3)

While cell culture supplement's performance was typically characterized well, Albumin, being one in the list, is usually not the case. as a by-product in the plasma fractionation process, and its stickiness toward other plasma molecules, Albumin has long been considered to have untenable lot-to-lot variations.

Exploit Performance by Defining Composition

In collaboration with Industry leaders, we have created a recombinant Albumin formulation, deAlbumin™, on which all small molecules associated with albumin are stripped, and associated from a defined recipe. deAlbumin™ can boost the viable iPS cell number in E8 culture by 45%.