New StemSpan™ ACF Plasma Component-Free Hematopoietic Expansion Media

STEMCELL Technologies Inc. have announced the launch of StemSpan™ ACF, a new animal component-free (ACF) and chemically-defined hematopoietic stem cell expansion medium, which contains no animal and human plasma-derived components. While serum-free media is well established, this is the first complete medium available for the culture and expansion of hematopoietic stem cells that is free of animal and human proteins and only contains recombinant and synthetic components.

StemSpan™ ACF presents a huge leap forward in the field of hematopoietic cell culture as it allows researchers to study hematopoiesis and cell therapy development without concerns of transmission of adventitious agents from plasma derived components, or lack of consistency between different lots of human or bovine proteins in other complete media formulations.

“StemSpan™ ACF supports equivalent total nuclear cell and CD34+ cell expansion as the existing highest performance serum-free medium on the market,” said Dr. Bert Wognum, the senior scientist responsible for hematopoietic stem cell expansion medium development at STEMCELL Technologies. “It also supports monocyte to dendritic cell differentiation and might be used by researchers to develop and optimize their own culture systems to generate large numbers of other mature blood cells.”

“We are delighted to build on our track record for providing high performance hematopoietic serum-free media to scientists, by introducing products like StemSpan™ ACF that take the field to a new and highly awaited level,” said Dr. Allen Eaves, CEO and President of STEMCELL Technologies. “We are excited to give scientists products that take their work to the next phase and remove the difficulties associated with plasma-derived components in other serum-free media.”

By adding StemSpan™ ACF to its portfolio, STEMCELL Technologies continues to support the movement of hematopoietic stem cell expansion research toward cell therapy development and clinical relevance. The high-quality StemSpan products include StemSpan™ SFEM, StemSpan H3000, and StemSpan™ ACF for ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic progenitor cells.