Description

Williams’ E Medium – Max

Background

Williams’ E Medium – Max is a commonly used media for Mammalian cell culture.

Advantages

The advantages of Williams’ E Medium – Max over Williams’ E Medium 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

Williams’ E Medium – 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 William’s E Medium based on the amount of Sodium Bicarbonate and HEPES (PH capacity)
• Phenol Red

Williams’ E Medium – Max contains no proteins, lipids, or growth factors. Therefore, it requires supplementation, commonly with 10% Fetal bovine Serum (FBS).

Formulation

For complete formulation click here: Williams’ E Medium-MAX Formulation

References

• Isolation and long-term cell culture of epithelial-like cells from rat liver. Williams GM, Weisburger EK, Weisburger JH. Exp Cell Res. 1971 Nov;69(1):106-12. doi: 10.1016/0014-4827(71)90316-8. PMID:
• Growth and continuous passage of COMMA-D mouse mammary epithelial cells in hormonally defined serum-free medium. Riss TL, Sirbasku DA. Cancer Res. 1987 Jul 15;47(14):3776-82. PMID: 3297308.
• Primary in vitro antibody responses by purified murine B lymphocytes in serum-free defined medium. Mosier DE. J Immunol. 1981 Oct;127(4):1490-3. PMID: 6792277