Cell Culture Media Analysis Of Vitamins: Be Informed To Address The Metabolic Needs Of Your Cells

Vitamins have various shelf lives and may be prone to degradation from changes in temperature, oxygen or light exposure. Discussed here are four vitamins which are commonly supplemented to meet the metabolic needs of cells.

This study focuses on thiamine (vitamin B1), nicotinamide (vitamin B3), pyridoxine (vitamin B6) and choline, which are all present in many established cell culture formulations and chemically defined CHO medias.

We tested identical formulations of DMEM/F-12 media (without glutamine) from three commercial providers. All media was stored unopened and refrigerated and run on the same day. Each sample was diluted 10X with Rebel TM diluent, placed into an amber vial and run immediately on the Rebel. The concentrations reported were averaged across five replicates for each
sample.

One should not assume uniformity when switching between cell culture media providers. Investigating your media prior to feeding your cells is an easy step towards ensuring that variability in your experiment is not due to unexpected fluctuations from the media formulation.