title: Development and advantages of serum-free, chemically defined nutrient media for culturing of nerve tissue.
abstract: This paper describes in a historical perspective the development of serum-free nutrient media suitable for long-term culturing of nerve tissue. Several disadvantages of the use of serum are discussed, coupled with an acknowledgement that it is not always advisable to replace a routinely used serum-supplemented medium by a chemically defined medium with the expectation of immediate success. Therefore a strategy is given on how to develop a chemically defined medium that is thoroughly tuned to the specific needs of the cell type to be cultured. It is argued that such a medium has several substantial advantages over the use of serum.
authors.affiliation: Netherlands Institute for Brain Research, Amsterdam.
authors.forename: H J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Romijn
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003470:Culture Media / Q000494:pharmacology; D009417:Nerve Tissue / Q000166:cytology* / Q000187:drug effects
chemical_list: D003470:Culture Media