Summary
Eighteen lots of fetal bovine serum were tested for their ability to support clonal growth and 3-methylcholanthrene-induced morphological transformation of hamster embryo cells in vitro. Most of them supported cloning efficiencies of over 11%. However, cloning efficiency alone was an inadequate criterion for selecting serum for transformation studies, since no transformation was observed with some lots, even though their cloning efficiencies were over 16%. This shows the importance of pretesting serum for its ability to support morphological transformation before it is used in mammalian cell carcinogenesis tests.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Honn, K. U., J. A. Singley, and W. Chavin. 1975. Fetal bovine serum: a multi-variate standard. Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med. 149: 344–347.
Milo, G. E., W. B. Malarkey, J. E. Powell, J. R. Blakeslee, and D. S. Yohn. 1976. Effects of steroid hormones in fetal bovine serum on plating and cloning of human cells in vitro. In Vitro 12: 23–30.
Esber, H. J., I. J. Payne, and A. E. Bogden. 1973. Variability of hormone concentrations and ratios in commercial sera used for tissue culture. J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 50: 559–562.
Boone, C. W., N. Mantel, T. D. Caruso, Jr., E. Kazam, and R. E. Stevenson. 1974. Quality control studies on fetal bovine serum used in tissue culture. In Vitro 7: 174–189.
Goodheart, C. R., B. C. Casto, A. Zwiers, and P. R. Regaier. 1973. Plating efficiency for primary hamster embryo cells as an index of efficacy of fetal bovine serum for cell culture. Appl. Microbiol. 26: 525–528.
Poiley, J. A., R. F. Schuman, and R. J. Pienta. 1977. Characterization of normal human embryo cells grown to over 100 population doublings. In Vitro 14: 405–412.
Bertram, J. S. 1977. Effects of serum concentration on the expression of carcinogen-induced transformation in the L3H/10T 1/2 C1 8 cell line. Cancer Res. 37: 514–523.
DiPaolo, J. A., P. Donovan, and R. Nelson. 1969. Quantitative studies ofin vitro transformation by chemical carcinogens. J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 42: 867–876.
Pienta, R. J., J. A. Poiley, and W. B. Lebherz, III. 1977. Morphological transformation of early passage golden Syrian hamster embryo cells derived from cryopreserved primary cultures as a reliablein vitro bioassay for identifying diverse carcinogens. Int. J. Cancer 19: 642–655.
Kakunaga, T. 1973. Quantitative assay system of malignant transformation by chemical carcinogens using a clone derived from BALB/3T3. Int. J. Cancer 12: 463–473.
Freeman, A. A., E. K. Weisburger, J. H. Weisburger, R. G. Wolford, J. M. Maryak, and R. J. Huebner. 1973. Transformation of cell cultures as an indication of the carcinogenic potential of chemicals. J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 51: 799–808.
Kakunaga, T. 1977. The transformation of human diploid cells. In: H. H. Hiatt, J. D. Watson, and J. A. Winsten (Eds.),Origins of Human Cancer. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, pp. 1537–1547.
Barrett, J. C., and P. O. P. Ts'o. 1978. Relationship between somatic mutation and neoplastic transformation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 75: 3297–3301.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Research sponsored by the National Cancer Institute under Contract No. N01-CO-75380 with Litton Bionetics, Inc.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schuman, R.F., Pienta, R.J., Poiley, J.A. et al. Effect of fetal bovine serum on 3-methylcholanthrene-induced transformation of hamster cells in vitro. In Vitro 15, 730–735 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02618253
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02618253