Adaptation to serum-free culture of HEK 293T and Huh7.0 cells

Background The fetal bovine serum (FBS) is a component of higher value added to the medium, which may cause difficulty in the process of recovery and purification of bioproduct. Considering all these reasons, it is essential to develop a simple cell adaptation process for the culture of cells in serum-free, animal component-free, or protein-free medium conditions [1,2]. The adaptation of cellular lineages to culture FBS or animal protein free medium can allow optimization of cell growth and expression of heterologous genes, facilitating recovery of recombinant proteins expressed in these cells. Mammalian cell growth can be adapted to serum-free media through progressive reductions of serum concentrations [3]. This gradual reduction over time increases the probability of successful adaptation to low-serum or serum-free mediaby allowing the self-adjustment of the cells to the environment, with the time required depending on the cell line and the composition of the media [4]. Our aim was to establish and to study mammalian cell lines adapted to serum free medium for the expression of recombinant proteins. Thus, we assessed cell growth, nutrient consumption and metabolite production kinetics in the cell culture media tested.