Culturing cells has become a very routine and standard practice in many biology labs. There are immortalized cell lines that can be obtained from ATCC or other vendors, as well as primary cell lines from hippocampal or kidney or heart or whatever tissue is of interest to the research at hand. Aside from the type of cell used, a critical issue with tissue culture is media. Basic media includes Earle’s BSS or Neurobasal or Opti-Mem, or various other media formulations depending on the tissue or cell line plated and its uses. While most media has been around for a long time and methods are pretty standard, BrainBits™ LLC is a small company in Illinois that has developed a novel line of Hibernate™ media for use with neural tissue.
Hibernate™ media is a specially formulated nutrient media that can be used to store neural tissue for several weeks in refrigerated conditions. The patent claims that “Hibernate™ is a nutrient medium for the maintenance of neural tissue or cells in ambient carbon dioxide levels”. The company sells isolated regions (such as hippocampal, striatum, cortex) of the embryonic rat brain they have termed “brain bits” stored in this Hibernate™ media. You can also order the Hibernate™ media separately, however. It can be used to store your own dissected neural tissue for future use or for shipping to other labs, to keep the brain viable during isolation of neural tissue, or to keep neurons healthy during microscopy, electrophysiology or flow cytometry. It is available as Hibernate™ E (for embryonic tissue) or Hibernate™ A (for adult neural tissue). It is also available in a low-fluorescent form, without phenol red, or as Ca without B27.
We have used this media in our lab for over a year now. We use it to store isolated mouse embryonic hippocampal tissue and cells for several days in the refrigerator; the stored tissue or cells can then be used for plating at a later date. This allows us to have cells growing at different stages of development from one dissection, saving time as well as mice. Our biggest use of the Hibernate™ E media is in keeping embryonic hippocampal cells alive and healthy during time-lapse microscopy. Cells are maintained in a maintenance media in the incubator, but before imaging for extended periods of time at the microscope, I replace this media with the Hibernate™ E media. The media has been shown to be very pH-resistant and an excellent buffer for dishes left on the stage for an hour or more at room temperature or 37°C. I have left dishes on the microscope stage for up to 2 hours, returned these dishes to the incubator (switching back to their storage media) and they remain healthy for imaging again at subsequent dates. I use the low-fluorescent media and this has worked excellently in eliminating background fluorescence and in obtaining clear pictures.
I have been very happy with this product. It is very novel and lives up to its name. There are no other products I know of that are capable of keeping neuronal tissues alive or healthy for such extended periods of time. The only drawbacks that I can think of are the price (~$72 for 500 ml, although a bulk discount is available) and the time of shipping (~1 week), although this may have improved as demand has grown. Overall, it is an amazing product that has become essential in our lab for use in embryonic neural tissue applications.
Research Associate
Department of Ophthalmology
University of California, San Francisco