**4. Fundamental parts of cell culture technology**

#### **4.1 Culture medium**

Culture medium is a composition of nutrients and selected buffer that helps to grow an organism naturally. Media can be designed based on variety of cell, types of cells because it is necessary for cell survival, proliferations and growth. The influence of cell culture technology creates inevitable progress in molecular biology research. This technique widely utilized in different fields like the assessment of toxicity and efficacy of new drugs, development of various biopharmaceutical products and vaccines, and used in reproductive technology. No one probably would argue against the claim that a culture medium is the foremost essential measure in cell culture technique. Selection of suitable media for research goal is essential. Sometimes researchers should modify a properties or composition of medium in order to their experiment. There are mainly two types of media used by researcher such as natural media and synthetic media [3, 11, 12]. *Natural media*: The media that comprising of natural biological substances, e.g. embryo extract, plasma, and serum. Coagulant or clots i.e. plasma which is separated from heparinized blood, serum, and fibrinogen. Tissue extracts and Extracts of chicken embryos, liver, and spleen and bone marrow extract considered as a natural cell culture media. Biological fluids such as Plasma, serum, lymph, amniotic fluid, and pleural fluid also used as culture media. *Synthetic media*: The media comprising with basal medium and supplements, like-serum, growth factors, and different hormones. On the basis of type of supplements synthetic media can be classified into a few bunches such as: (1) Serum-containing media: In this media as a supplement bovine, human, equine, or other serum is used. This media causes less reproducibility and microbial contamination due to unknown and unclear media composition. (2) Serum-free media: This media has a high reproducibility due to presence of the supplements of bovine serum albumin or α-or β-globulin (crude protein fractions). (3) Xeno-free Media: Prepared based on human-source components i.e. human serum albumin, are commonly used as supplements but there are no

### *A Brief Concept of Cell Culture: Challenges, Prospects and Applications DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99387*

animal components used as supplements. (4) Protein-free media: Prepared based on undefined components like- peptide fractions (protein hydrolysates) which are generally used as supplements, and (5) Chemically defined media: Undefined components are used as supplement. Crude protein fractions, tissue extracts, hydrolysates are not good supplements, but highly purified components (recombinant proteins) are appropriate supplements. Followings are some brand name of culture media commonly used in the laboratory: Eagle's Minimum Essential Medium (EMEM) a simpler basal medium (BME) for culturing mouse L cells and HeLa cells. Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium (DMEM) is a basal media (BME). Iscove's Modified Dulbecco's Medium (IMDM) used for growth of lymphocytes and hybridomas. Hybri-Care Medium is a combination and modification of DMEM considered for the propagation of hybridomas and other fastidious cell lines. Ham's Nutrient Mixtures used for Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. Kaighn's modification of Ham's F-12 (Ham's F-12 K) was designed to develop and differentiation of primary cells with or without serum. DMEM/F12 Medium is a 1:1 mixture of Dulbecco's modified EMEM and Ham's F-12 for the growth of a wide range of cell types in both serum and serum-free formulations. Leibovitz's L-15 Medium for biopsy samples without CO2.
