The Rise of Physiologic Media

• Published in: Trends in cell biology Vol. 29; no. 11; pp. 854 - 861
• Main Author: Cantor, Jason R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2019; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Animals; Biological research; Cell culture; Cell Culture Techniques - methods; Cell Line; Culture media; Culture Media - chemistry; Culture Media - pharmacology; Environmental factors; Humans; Mice; Plasma - chemistry
• ISSN: 0962-8924; 1879-3088; 1879-3088
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tcb.2019.08.009

Developed decades ago, traditional culture media were not intended to resemble the metabolic composition of human blood, and indeed poorly do so. Yet, despite what is now a clear recognition that environmental factors influence metabolism, such media remain standard to in vitro studies across virtually all areas of biological research. The recent development of physiologic media, like other efforts designed to address the modeling capacity of cell culture, holds immense potential to improve understanding and interpretation of diverse biological and pharmacological studies. Environmental factors impact metabolic phenotypes and intertwined physiologic processes in mammalian cells.Complete media that remain the workhorses of cell culture studies typically consist of a basal medium that poorly resembles conditions encountered in the human body and a largely undefined serum supplement.The systematic and bottom-up design of new physiologic media represents an important advance toward improving the modeling capacity of cell culture methods.The development and selection of culture media should now be guided by distinct applications or modeling-based objectives.The immense promise for incorporation of physiologic media into basic and translational research must be balanced by careful considerations critical to the design, use, and continued evolution of experimental model systems.