Development of standardized cell culture conditions for tumor cells with potential clinical application

Tumor cell lines have enormous value for the study of different aspects of cancer biology and have also recently gained great importance in autologous cell-based anti-tumor therapies. However, the use of these cells is still limited because in vitro growth is hampered by suboptimal culture conditions and current media contain fetal bovine serum (FBS), which poses serious safety concerns regarding clinical application.

To address this drawback, we aimed to develop a strategy for optimization of the culture medium for human medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) cell lines as a model system. We combined the general cell screening system (GCSS), which continuously measured the growth behavior of cells in a 96-well plate format, with statistically based experimental designs.

The results obtained clearly demonstrated that, just by changing the composition of the basal medium, a significantly enhanced growth rate could be observed, and by subsequent addition of several substances a serum-free cell culture medium could be developed. This medium allowed the propagation of two MTC cell lines comparable with conventionally used serum-supplemented medium.

We present a fast and easy way to screen for substances that are essential for tumor cell growth in vitro. Furthermore, these tumor cells can be adapted to culture conditions that allow the use of the cells in safe cell-based therapies. This is of utmost importance because of increasing regulatory requirements.