Evaluation of Arthrospira (Spirulina) maxima as a substitute to fetal bovine serum in the culture of H460 cells

Abstract

Propagation of human and animal cells in vitro requires adequate culture conditions and culture media. The culture media has to supply all essential nutrients for cell metabolism, growth and proliferation. Basal media are frequently supplemented with animal serum, mostly fetal bovine serum (FBS), which promotes cell growth and proliferation. However the concerns have been raised regarding both traditional method used to collect the serum from donor fetus and the possibility of viral contamination of FBS. Therefore present study was conducted to test Arthrospira (Spirulina) maxima extract as FBS substitute. We tested the extract using lung cancer cell lines (H460) routinely used in cancer research. H460 cell line was grown in the medium containing a 50%:50%, 30%:70% and 10%:90% blended media of FBS:Spirulina animal cell culture serum (SACCS) for 72 h, respectively. Two conditions of FBS 50%:SACCS 50% and FBS 30%:SACCS 70% showed similar proliferation rate and not revealed significant morphological differentiation compared with FBS 100%, when H460 was grown for 10 passages (p>0.05). Also there was a slight difference in cell cycle and cell apoptosis analysis of H460 adapted to SACCS, but it was substantially similar. This study demonstrated that the SACCS can be alternative to FBS as it supported the proliferation of H460 cells has a great potential to be used for the cell culture.