Proliferation of glioma cells in serum-free defined medium.

The requirement for a serum supplement to basal culture medium to support the growth and viability of cells in vitro has been a major hindrance to reducing and thereby controlling experimental variables. The complexity and undefined nature of serum as well as the variability of serum lots make it difficult to reproduce data and to interpret results of experiments. This paper presents preliminary results obtained with C6 glioma cell cultures in which serum was replaced by growth factors and a hormone. A brief review of the use of serum-free defined medium for the culture of tumor cells and the potential uses of defined media that are cell-type specific are also presented.