Giessen, March 2013
Cultivation of Vero cells and replication of measles virus in the fully synthetic InVitrus™ VP-6 minimal culture medium.
The Institute of Bioengineering and Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Applied Sciences Mittelhessen, Giessen, Germany, reported interesting preliminary results on the cultivation of Vero cells and measles virus replication in the fully synthetic InVitrus VP-6 minimal culture medium developed by Cell Culture Technologies.
Serum-dependent Vero cells growing in Eagle’s MEM with 10% fetal calf serum (1) and serum-free Vero cells growing in VP-SFM (2) were successfully adapted to proliferation under chemically-defined culture conditions either by direct or stepwise adaptation, then routinely maintained in a minimal medium totally devoid of peptides, proteins and complex supplements. The adapted cells could be cryopreserved in the same synthetic medium without using serum. The investigation shows that Vero cells stop proliferating upon infection to correctly replicate GFP-tagged measles viruses in our minimal medium. While both glucose uptake and lactate formation nearly cease, GFP expression could be detected two days after infection. Current investigations focus on the viral replication kinetics in Vero cells cultivated in fully synthetic, inexpensive micro-environments. Such studies will contribute to the establishment of vaccine production techniques in low-cost culture media without using any chemically undefined and/or expensive medium components.