A large amount of parasite biomass production necessitates a higher volume of culture media, and this further increases the overall cost. For this reason, novel and alternative culture supplementary materials have been continuously investigated. | Turk J Biol 36 (2012) 653-657 © TÜBİTAK doi: Effect of cell-conditioned media on biomass production of Leishmania parasites Melahat BAGIROVA, Rabia ÇAKIR KOÇ, Adil ALLAHVERDİYEV, Melike ERSÖZ Department of Bioengineering, Chemical and Metallurgical Faculty, Yıldız Technical University, İstanbul - TURKEY Received: ● Accepted: Abstract: A large amount of parasite biomass production necessitates a higher volume of culture media, and this further increases the overall cost. For this reason, novel and alternative culture supplementary materials have been continuously investigated. The aim of this study was therefore to evaluate the effect of cell-conditioned media, collected as waste material during routine cell culture, on the growth and development of Leishmania parasites in vitro. In this study, for the first time, we show that cell-conditioned medium obtained from MCF-7 culture increased the growth of Leishmania parasites in vitro. These results show that the metabolites that are present in cell-conditioned media may play an important role in in vitro parasite culture. Cell-conditioned media may be used as an economic tool for isolation, cultivation, and obtaining biomass of Leishmania parasites in laboratory conditions. Key words: Culture, medium, Leishmania, large-scale, biomass Introduction Leishmaniasis is a group of parasitic diseases transmitted by blood-sucking sand flies infected with Leishmania parasites (1). Leishmania, a protozoan parasite, is one of 21 known species responsible for leishmaniasis. The World Health Organization has declared leishmaniasis among 1 of the 6 major tropical diseases, and it is a major human and animal disease in the tropic and subtropic areas of world (14). Leishmania has 2 main life cycle morphologies: the intracellular amastigote in the mammalian host and the motile promastigote in the vector (2). In vitro cultivation of protozoan parasites is very important for diagnosis, .
