Influence of various medium environment to in vitro human T cell culture

Nowadays, adoptive T cell immunotherapy is emerging as a novel and potent treatment for cancer. To prepare enough effective T cells for treatment use, their rapid expansion is favorable. Our study compared 6 commonly used cultural media for human T cells, including serum-containing media and serum-free media, namely RPMI 1640, IMDM, Gibco OpTmizer CTS T Cell Expansion SFM, Gibco AIM-V Medium CTS, LONZA X-VIVO 15, and StemSpan SFEM with or without Dynabeads Human T-Activator CD3/CD28, on in vitro T cell expansion, apoptosis, and immune phenotype. Our study results suggest that serum-free media provide better proliferation environment for T cells. Among the 3 serum-free media, we identify OpTmizer and AIM-V as better T cell culture environments compared with X-VIVO as T cells are proved to have higher viability in the first two media. Besides, we found that in vitro human T cells keep relatively resting status among non-CD3/CD28 groups, since they have weak proliferation and apoptosis abilities. The phenotypes of T cells in different cultural environments over time indicate T cells maturation during culture duration. These results provide a firm foundation of adoptive T cell immunotherapy.