title: Human glioma cell culture: two FCS-free media could be recommended for clinical use in immunotherapy.
abstract: Immunotherapy, particularly active vaccination, may be developed as an effective and safe treatment modality for malignant gliomas, which continue to have a poor prognosis, despite advances in surgical techniques and adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Since no glioma-specific tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) have been discovered, autologous tumor cells or well-established glioma cell lines could be used in future vaccination protocols to induce antitumour immunity against unknown TAAs. One obstacle for clinical use of these tumour cell vaccines is related to foetal calf serum (FCS). Efforts are currently being directed toward developing FCS-free media and serum-free alternatives to culture these cell vaccines. In this study, a medium containing human serum and one serum-free medium (UltraCulture), supplemented or not with epidermal growth factor, were tested on morphology, survival, DNA content and TAA expression of human glioma cell lines and glioma biopsy primary cultures. Their effects were compared on FCS-containing medium. Results show that, whatever the medium used, no significant variations in morphology and survival were observed. Furthermore, human serum-containing medium or UltraCulture preserved at early passage cultures the cell population of interest present in the biopsies before culture. In addition, the expression profile of eight TAAs was similar between these media. These data indicate that human serum-containing medium and UltraCulture serum-free medium could be promising candidates to produce tumour-cell vaccines.
authors.affiliation: Département de Neurochirurgie, CHU, 49933 Angers, France. anne.clavreul@univ-angers.fr
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Clavreul
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Jean
authors.forename: Laurence
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Preisser
authors.forename: Agnès
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chassevent
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sapin
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Michalak
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Menei
mesh_terms: D000951:Antigens, Neoplasm / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D001706:Biopsy; D019496:Cancer Vaccines / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D018929:Cell Culture Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D002470:Cell Survival; D016895:Culture Media, Serum-Free; D004273:DNA, Neoplasm / Q000032:analysis; D005434:Flow Cytometry; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D005910:Glioma / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D007167:Immunotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D014407:Tumor Cells, Cultured
chemical_list: D000951:Antigens, Neoplasm; D019496:Cancer Vaccines; D016895:Culture Media, Serum-Free; D004273:DNA, Neoplasm