Powdered Minimum Essential Medium (MEM)

MEM can be used for the culture of a variety of suspension and adherent mammalian cells, including HeLa, BHK-21, 293, HEP-2, HT-1080, MCF-7, fibroblasts, and primary rat astrocytes.etc. MEM cell culture medium does not contain  proteins, lipids or growth factors. So it usually requires to add 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) as nutrient supplementation. MEM contains Earle’s Balanced Salts for a CO2 incubator or Hanks’ Balanced Salts for a CO2-free incubator.
For a wide range of cell culture applications, we offer modified MEM media with various components, as well as MEM media with customizable components.

Ingredients of Powdered Minimum Essential Medium (MEM)

This MEM dry powder medium needs to be supplemented with sodium bicarbonate, adjusted pH and filtered when preparing. The detailed formulation method is as follows:

1. Add 950 mL of distilled water to a mixing vessel as close to final volume as possible.
2. Add dry medium to room temperature (15°C to 30°C) water and stir gently. Do not heat water.
3. Rinse the inside of the pack to remove any residual powder.
4. Add 29.3 mL of 75 g/L NaHCO3 solution to the medium.
5. Adjust the pH to 0.2 to 0.3 units below the desired final working pH by slowly adding and stirring 1 N NaOH or 1 N HCl. The pH may rise by 0.1 to 0.3 units after filtration. The recommended working pH is 7.1-7.4.
6. Adjust final volume with distilled water.
7. Immediately process the medium through the membrane filtration function of a 0.2 μm filter into a sterile container using a positive pressure system.