Trends with Antibody Therapeutics

Traditionally, the production of mAbs uses complex culture media containing glucose and amino acids as the main sources of carbon for cell metabolism, as well as vitamins, micronutrients and sometimes animal serum, usually fetal bovine serum. Chapter 5 provides a discussion on composition of culture media and recent trends in the search for formulas that do not require the use of animal serum, or of proteins of animal origin. These serum-free formulations use substitutes such as peptones, epithelial and fibroblast growth factors, hydrolysates, yeast extract, choline, and inositol. For the production of mAbs, various serum-free formulas are available, some of these developed specifically for a given cell line (Chu and Robinson, 2001). The development of those media is easier for non-anchorage-dependent cells, such as those used for mAb production. Thus, approximately 50% of the antibodies for therapeutic use are already produced using serum-free media. In some circumstances, the elimination of serum should be accompanied by the addition of other substances with the same shear stress protective effect of serum proteins,... 

---