Abstract
The characterization, control, and reporting of environmental conditions in mammalian cell cultures is fundamental to ensure physiological relevance and reproducibility in basic and preclinical biomedical research. The potential issue of environment instability in routine cell cultures in affecting biomedical experiments was identified many decades ago. Despite existing evidence showing variable environmental conditions can affect a suite of cellular responses and key experimental readouts, the underreporting of critical parameters affecting cell culture environments in published experiments remains a serious problem. Here, we outline the main sources of potential problems, improved guidelines for reporting, and deliver recommendations to facilitate improved culture-system based research. Addressing the lack of attention paid to culture environments is critical to improve the reproducibility and translation of preclinical research, but constitutes only an initial step towards enhancing the relevance of in vitro cell cultures towards in vivo physiology.
Highlights
Mammalian cell cultures have been a foundational resource in almost every biomedical research program since the 1990s (Petricciani, 1995; Hu and Aunins, 1997; Merten, 2006)
The use of mammalian cell cultures as preclinical models ranges from the characterization of in vivo physiological mechanisms and manipulation of disease-related pathways to the maintenance of stem cells for therapeutic purposes
Physiological conditions in mammalian cell cultures typically aim to mimic conditions in extracellular fluids, including temperature, typically adjusted to 37°C, O2 to 18.6%–20.9%, CO2 to 5%, and pH adjusted to 7.4 units (Wenger et al, 2015)
Summary
The characterization, control, and reporting of environmental conditions in mammalian cell cultures is fundamental to ensure physiological relevance and reproducibility in basic and preclinical biomedical research. The potential issue of environment instability in routine cell cultures in affecting biomedical experiments was identified many decades ago. Despite existing evidence showing variable environmental conditions can affect a suite of cellular responses and key experimental readouts, the underreporting of critical parameters affecting cell culture environments in published experiments remains a serious problem. We outline the main sources of potential problems, improved guidelines for reporting, and deliver recommendations to facilitate improved culture-system based research. Addressing the lack of attention paid to culture environments is critical to improve the reproducibility and translation of preclinical research, but constitutes only an initial step towards enhancing the relevance of in vitro cell cultures towards in vivo physiology
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