Study of the Potentiality of a Cell Culture Medium of Autologous Blood Serum for Cell Transplantation Therapy for Injured Vocal Folds

Abstract

We succeeded in the regeneration of an injured vocal fold in a canine by the transplantation of bone marrow derived stromal cells (BSCs). This therapy required a cell culture. The safety of the ordinal culture medium with an animal serum such as fetal bovine serum (FBS), however, has not yet been confirmed. In this in vitro study, we investigated the potentiality of a culture medium of autologous blood serum (ABS) which would be the safest additive for clinical applications.
Canine ABS and the following three types of medium were prepared. Mediums I, II and III were alpha-Minimum Essential Medium (alpha-MEM) as blood serum free medium for control, alpha-MEM with 15% ABS and Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium (D-MEM) with 10% FBS for ordinal medium, respectively. The growth rates of the canine cultured BSCs in these three mediums were estimated.
After 2 weeks culture, the number of cells in medium I, II and III increased by 2, 8-10 and 14-15 times, respectively. These results showed that ABS had a satisfactory cell growth promoting action to apply clinically as a substitute for FBS.