The history of serum often cannot be separated from the development of cell culture media.
In 1882, Sidney Ringer developed Ringer's solution, a balanced salt solution close to the composition of body fluids, which successfully maintained the heartbeat of frogs. After the success of the Ringer's solution, researchers began to focus on the cells in the culture device and attempted to maintain these cells.
In 1907, Ross G. Harrison successfully monitored the significant growth of nerve fibers in a frog from its lymphatic fluid, which is considered the beginning of animal cell culture.
Alexis Carrel, a French surgeon and biologist, designed the prototype of the widely used cell culture bottle today and established aseptic operation techniques, making significant contributions to tissue culture technology.
In 1909, Bruns discovered that lymphatic fluid was not suitable for cultivating cells in warm blooded animals and instead used plasma. He successfully cultured chicken embryonic cells using chicken plasma and also successfully cultured mammalian cells 17 years later. Subsequently, plasma has become the primary culture medium for various animal cells.
Due to the unknown composition of lymphatic, plasma, and embryo extracts, it has become a new scientific research on which components of them affect the survival and growth of animal tissues and cells. This situation led to a period of researchers attempting to identify growth promoting substances in these natural ingredients and replace them with specific components.
At present, synthetic culture media can be divided into several groups based on the type of supplement added. For example, serum containing medium, serum-free medium, protein free medium, and chemically defined medium.
Table 1: Categories of animal cell culture media
category | definition | type | Example |
natural medium | Composed of natural biological substances such as plasma, serum, and embryo extracts | Coagulation or clotting | Plasma separated from heparinized blood, serum, and fibrinogen |
tissue extract | Chicken embryo extract, liver, spleen, and bone marrow extract | ||
biological fluids | Plasma, serum, lymphatic fluid, amniotic fluid, and pleural fluid | ||
synthetic medium | Composed of basic culture medium and supplements such as serum, growth factors, and hormones
| Serum containing culture medium | 人，牛，马或其他血清用作补充剂 |
serum-free medium | The crude protein fraction, such as bovine serum albumin or alpha - or beta globulin, is used as a supplement | ||
Non heterogeneous component culture medium | Human derived ingredients, such as human serum albumin, are used as supplements, but animal ingredients are not allowed as supplements | ||
Protein free medium | Uncertain ingredients, such as peptide fractions (protein hydrolysates) used as supplements | ||
Chemical defined culture medium | Uncertain components such as crude protein fractions, hydrolysis products, and tissue extracts are not suitable as supplements, but highly purified components such as recombinant proteins are suitable supplements |
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