Gibco™ Neurobasal™ Medium

Yes, the protein content in this product is high enough so filtering through a low protein binding filter as a 50X or 1X in solution should not be a problem.

No, it is not recommended to freeze media due to the potential of precipitates forming upon thaw. Inorganic salts and amino acids in the formulation may come out of solution when exposed to temperature fluctuations. These precipitates will not go back into solution easily once formed.

Neurobasal and Neurobasal-A media (for postnatal and adult neurons) allow for long-term maintenance of neuronal cells without the need for an astrocyte feeder layer. These media should be supplemented with either serum or a serum-free supplement, plus 0.5mM L-glutamine. B-27 supplement is a serum-free supplement that comes as a 50X concentrate in a 10ml volume. This is enough supplement for 500ml of media. Fetal, postnatal, and adult neural cultures can be grown in the appropriate Neurobasal medium supplemented with B-27 supplement .

We also have two other supplements. One is called G-5 and is for growth and expression of glial cells (normal and tumor) of astrocytic phenotype. This comes in a 1ml size, at a 100X concentration. The other supplement is called N-2 and is for growth and expression of post-mitotic neurons and tumor cells of neuronal phenotype. This comes in a 5ml size, at a 100X concentration.

For more information on Neurobasal media, search "Neurobasal" from our website home page.

The original published formulation of Neurobasal culture medium contained 10 µM L-cysteine. However, our Neurobasal media formulation contains 260 µM L-cysteine because it was shown to improve cell survival.

Neurospheres can be plated on laminin coated culture plates for neuron differentiation. The issue is that it is difficult to control the plating density of neurospheres. Alternatively, neurospheres can be dissociated into single cells and plate single cell suspension at a certain density such as 1-5 x 10^4 cells/cm2 onto laminin coated plates for neuron differentiation. For general neuron differentiation, Neurobasal+B27+N2 can be used. Growth factors such as BDNF and/or GDNF can be added into medium for improving survival of differentiating NSCs.