Description

Basal Medium Eagle-MAX (BME-MAX) in Earle’s Buffer

Background

Basal Medium Eagle-MAX (BME-MAX) in Earle’s Buffer is a commonly used media for Mammalian cell culture.

Advantages

The advantages of BME-MAX over BME are:

• Higher PH Capacity
• Moreover, it contains 4 mM L-Alanyl-L-Glutamine (0.869 g/L) instead of L-Glutamine and therefore:
• Possess longer shelf life.
• More importantly, minimizes toxic ammonia build-up.
• Significantly improves cell viability and growth.
• Remains stable across a wide range of temperatures.
• Improves the culture of primary cells.

Mechanism

Although L-glutamine is a vital amino acid, it degrades, generating toxic ammonia and pyrrolidine carboxylic acid. One way to minimize L-glutamine degradation in media is to gradually add these amino acids to your cell culture. However, keeping track of time to keep the amount of L-glutamine at the same level is tedious, if not impossible.

Alternatively, L-alanyl-L-glutamine can be used because it is much more stable in aqueous solutions. More importantly, it does not easily degrade and gradually releases aminopeptidases. As a result, L-glutamine and L-alanine are then used by the cells for protein production in the TCA cycle.

In addition to our Max formulation products, we manufacture PurMa^TM GluaSup (Cat# P3S210 559) is a combination of L-alanyl-L-glutamine that prevents degradation of L-glutamine.

Contents

Basal Medium Eagle-MAX (BME-MAX) in Earle’s Buffer contains:

• 5 mM sodium pyruvate
• High glucose (4.5g/L)
• Non-Essential Amino Acids
• 3.7 g/L Sodium Bicarbonate; PurMa Biologics Manufactures several types of BME-MAX in EBBS based on the amount of Sodium Bicarbonate and HEPES (PH capacity)
• Phenol Red

BME-MAX in EBBS contains no proteins, lipids, or growth factors. Therefore, it requires supplementation, commonly with 10% Fetal bovine Serum (FBS).

Formulation

The complete formulation can be found here: BME-MAX with Earl’s Buffer Formulation

References

1. Improved chemically defined basal medium (CMRL-1969) for primary monkey kidney and human diploid cells. Healy GM, et al.  Appl Microbiol. 1971 Jan;21(1):1-5. doi: 10.1128/am.21.1.1-5.1971. PMID:
2. Nutritional requirements for the production of herpes simplex virus. I. Influence of glucose and glutamine of herpes simplex virus production by HeLa cells. LEWIS VJ Jr, SCOTT LV. J Bacteriol. 1962 Mar;83(3):475-82. doi: 10.1128/jb.83.3.475-482.1962. PMID: 14464909
3. An improved culture system for secondary palatal elevation. Lewis CA, et al. In Vitro. 1980 Jun;16(6):453-60. doi: 10.1007/BF02626457. PMID: 7390537