Improved serum-free defined medium for proliferation and differentiation of chick primary myogenic cells

The development of serum-free and chemically defined media remains an important mission in the in vitro research of cells. The present study describes an improved serum-free medium that supports the proliferation and differentiation of chick embryonic primary skeletal myogenic cells, a cell type which has long been utilized for the study of cell differentiation. We show that serum can be replaced with transferrin, insulin, serum albumin, and fibroblast growth factor-2 as supplements to Dulbecco's modified Eagle minimum essential medium, with no loss in the ability of the medium to support proliferation and differentiation of myogenic cells. This medium has several additional advantages over serum-supplemented medium in that it also suppresses the proliferation of contaminating fibroblasts, and may allow the sensitive evaluation of the effects of various humoral factors on myogenic cells. We believe this medium will prove useful to the primary culture of chick myogenic cells.