Abstract
There is a need for a deeper understanding of the biochemical events affecting embryonic stem (ES) cell culture by analyzing the expansion of mouse ES cells in terms of both cell growth and metabolic kinetics. The influence of the initial cell density on cell expansion was assessed. Concomitantly, the biochemical profile of the culture was evaluated, which allowed measuring the consumption of important substrates, such as glucose and glutamine, and the production of metabolic byproducts, like lactate. The results suggest a more efficient cell metabolism in serum-free conditions and a preferential use of glutaminolysis as an energy source during cell expansion at low seeding densities. This work contributes to the development of fully-controlled bioprocesses to produce relevant numbers of ES cells for cell therapies and high-throughput drug screening.
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Acknowledgements
TGF and AMP acknowledge support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal (SFRH/BD/24365/2005 and SFRH/BD/36070/2007, respectively). This work was financially supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, through the MIT-Portugal Program, Bioengineering Systems Focus Area. The authors gratefully acknowledge Domingos Henrique (Institute of Molecular Medicine, Lisboa, Portugal) for providing the 46C mouse embryonic stem cell line.
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Fernandes, T.G., Fernandes-Platzgummer, A.M., da Silva, C.L. et al. Kinetic and metabolic analysis of mouse embryonic stem cell expansion under serum-free conditions. Biotechnol Lett 32, 171–179 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-009-0108-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-009-0108-0