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Stem cell biologists rarely get weekends off. Seven days a week, their labs need someone to change the media keeping induced pluripotent stem cells alive. For many groups that use iPSCs, weekend lab visits—and expensive culture media—are considered inescapable facts of research.
In an effort to solve both problems, researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine have developed a new human iPSC (hiPSC) culture medium any lab can make from scratch at low cost and while taking weekends off. They estimate the necessary ingredients cost around $16 per liter—or only 3 percent of what companies charge—without sacrificing the cells’ ability to differentiate into distinct cell types. The recipe for the “B8” medium—along with a protocol for hiPSC culture—was published January 9 in Stem Cell Reports.
“I think it’s amazing,” says Alysson Muotri, a stem cell biologist who directs the Stem Cell Program at the University ...
