Funox®

Impact of fungal contamination in cell culture

Fungal contamination may severely affect cell metabolism, growth and viability, as well as decrease transfection efficiency, thereby affecting the reproducibility of the results.

The main sources of fungal contaminations are through airborne routes, non-sterile equipment and reagents, or poor aseptic techniques. Fungi mostly grow in the medium in suspension but can also become attached to cells or to the growth vessel. They can be identified under the microscope as small isolated colonies at the surface of the medium and by extended growth lead to culture medium turbidity. At advanced stages of contamination, fungi might increase the pH of the cell culture medium, resulting in phenol-red containing media to appear to be lighter in tone.

Check out Funox®, our antimycotic reagent specifically designed to work as a prophylactic agent against fungal infection. It consists of Natamycin- a polyene antifungal antibiotic produced by Streptomyces natalensis. The antifungal activities of Natamycin are dependent on their binding to the cell membrane sterols of various fungi.

Benefits

• Specificity

  Funox® is an additive for culture media, which contains Natamycin, a naturally occurring antimicrobial agent that protects cell cultures from a broad range of common fungi and yeast contaminants.

• Wide Range of Applications

  Funox® can be used for permanent cell cultures as well as for contamination prevention in freshly prepared primary cell cultures.

• No Cell Toxicity

  No cytotoxic effects have been reported on various cell lines so far, provided that the product is used according to the instructions.

• Easy-to-use

  Funox® can be added directly to any flask or plate of cell culture, preferably while changing the medium or after passaging cells

• Stability

  Funox® should be refreshed after 7 days of incubation at 37 °C to achieve maximum protection.

Recommended Use

Funox® is applicable in research and industry for direct testing of cell cultures and biologicals. Not recommended for clinical diagnostics.

It is recommended to use the product on two different concentrations:

1. Cell culture media additive for prevention:
   Add 1 ml of Funox® to a 500 ml batch of complete, ready-to-use cell culture medium (1:500 dilution final concentration 10 μg/ml as a prophylactic product into cell cultures)
2. Cell culture media treatment for elimination (at early stage of contamination):
   a) Add 2.5 ml of Funox® to 500 ml of freshly prepared, complete cell culture medium.
   b) Replace medium of the contaminated cell culture with the Funox®–containing full medium by splitting or medium change (1:200 dilution, final concentration 25 µg/ml to eliminate existing fungal contaminations)

We advise to discard the cell culture in case of advanced stage of contamination.

Content

The easily applicable 500x aqueous solution is sterile-filtered and ready-to-use.

Package Sizes

• Cat. No. 14-002020 ml
• Cat. No. 14-00603 x 20 ml