New pluripotent stem cell media eliminates need for daily feeding

The new Gibco Essential 8 Flex Medium pluripotent stem cell (PSC) medium from Thermo Fisher Scientific offers researchers schedule flexibility, allowing two-day breaks from culture feeding without having to make changes to current workflows or compromise culture quality. It means they can save time and reduce sample handling, thereby decreasing the risk of contamination.

Culturing PSCs is a technical and time-consuming process. Many stem cell media components, such as fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2), lose activity at physiologically relevant temperatures and, therefore, stem cell cultures must be fed daily to preserve pluripotency and tri-lineage differentiation potential. To achieve this, scientists typically must work through the weekend or delegate feeding steps to other scientists, which can introduce unnecessary variability.

'Reducing the need for daily feeding changes the paradigm for how stem cells are regularly managed by eliminating a painful need to be with cells every day of every week for as long as the experiment continues,' said Amy Butler, Vice President and General Manager of Cell Biology at Thermo Fisher Scientific.

'While other solutions may claim to reduce the need for daily feeding, they require protocol and schedule changes and often sample recovery steps, which can greatly impact the quality of PSCs. Our new Essential 8 Flex Medium requires no compromises, giving researchers control over their PSC culture schedules.

'Unlike other commercially available PSC culture solutions that promise, 'weekend-free feeding', the new Gibco medium does not require substantial split-ratio adjustments prior to the break in feeding. Moreover, it retains nearly 90% FGF2 activity after 72 hours.'

The Gibco Essential 8 Flex Media, for research use only, is part of the Gibco Essential 8 Medium family of products launched in partnership with Cellular Dynamics International, a Fujifilm company.