Description

Kaighn’s Modification of Ham’s F-12-MAX (Ham’s F-12K MAX)

Background

Kaighn’s Modification of Ham’s F-12-MAX (Ham’s F-12K MAX) is a commonly used media for Mammalian cell culture.

Advantages

The advantages of Ham’s F-12K MAX over Ham’s F-12K 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, resulting in the generation of 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 which prevents degradation of L-glutamine.

Contents

Kaighn’s Modification of Ham’s F-12-MAX (Ham’s F-12K MAX) 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 Ham’s F-12K MAX based on the amount of Sodium Bicarbonate and HEPES (PH capacity)
• Phenol Red

Ham’s F-12K MAX 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:PurMa™ Ham F12K-MAX Formulation

References

1.  Clonal growth of mammalian cells in a chemically defined, synthetic medium . DULBECCO R, FREEMAN G. 1959 Jul;8(3):396-7. doi: 10.1016/0042-6822(59)90043-1. PMID: 13669362.
2. Plaque production by the polyoma virus. DULBECCO R, FREEMAN G. 1959 Jul;8(3):396-7. doi: 10.1016/0042-6822(59)90043-1. PMID: 13669362.
3. The nucleic acid of polyoma virus. Smith, J.D., Freeman, G., Vogt, M., et al., (1960) The nucleic acid of polyoma virus. Virology 12:185