Fetal bovine serum contains a high concentration of bovine EVs. These co-isolate with cell-secreted vesicles by precipitation, ultracentrifugation, or SEC. The contaminating particles carry bovine miRNA and proteins that generate false-positive signals in cargo profiling and skew particle counts measured by NTA. This makes it impossible to attribute results specifically to the cells under study.
Extracellular Vesicles / Exosomes
Exosome-Depleted FBS and EV Depletion Kits for Clean Cell Culture Media
Exosome-Depleted FBS and EV Depletion Kits for Clean Cell Culture Media
Background bovine vesicles come out of your FBS in under two hours, so you can run exosome secretion or uptake experiments against a clean baseline, without the 18-hour ultracentrifugation protocol that degrades growth factors. Affinity column or magnetic slurry depletion kits remove endogenous bovine exosomes from FBS, giving you EV-depleted serum for cell culture at preserved growth-factor activity.
Column-format kits use a bind-and-elute affinity column and deliver depleted FBS in a single gravity-flow step. Slurry-format kits use a magnetic slurry for flexible volume splitting across multiple tubes, with similar throughput. Both formats have been validated by nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) for depletion efficiency, showing greater than 90% reduction in particles below 200 nm. Residual particles remain, though, so you should describe preparations as EV-depleted rather than EV-free. Each kit depletes up to 100 ml of your FBS per run.
If lot-to-lot consistency and convenience matter more than depleting your own FBS, exosome-depleted FBS is also available as a ready-to-use media supplement: Exosome-depleted FBS Media Supplement (Exo-FBS from SBI System Biosciences). It is pre-validated for absence of bovine CD63 exosomes and bovine microRNAs, and supports equivalent cell growth to standard FBS in your culture.
Choose your FBS exosome depletion format by volume and workflow preference.
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Format. A fixed affinity column with gravity flow suits your lab bench use, processing a single batch up to 100 ml. A magnetic slurry allows flexible volume splitting across multiple tubes, at comparable throughput. For a ready-to-use supplement, order Exosome-depleted FBS Media Supplement directly and skip the depletion step entirely.
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Volume per depletion. Each kit depletes up to 100 ml FBS. For larger volumes, scale up by purchasing additional kits to match your needs. Kits are single-use.
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Verification. Include an NTA measurement of a pre- and post-depletion aliquot, to confirm depletion efficiency meets your study requirements. Validated protocols show greater than 90% particle reduction for your prep. Some residual particles remain, so you should describe preparations as EV-depleted or EV-reduced rather than EV-free.
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Upstream or media substitute. Depletion kits process your own FBS lot, preserving normal growth factors. If lot-to-lot consistency is critical to you, confirm a single large lot before depletion, rather than deploying across multiple lots. For a pre-depleted, characterised option, use the ready-to-use Exosome-depleted FBS Media Supplement.
Applications
Exosome secretion assays
Measure how much your cells secrete against a clean baseline, without background bovine vesicles inflating particle counts or exosome signal.
Exosome uptake and functional assays
Study how recipient cells take up vesicles, using defined producer-cell EVs that are not diluted by contaminating bovine particles.
Exosome miRNA cargo profiling
Avoid non-human bovine miRNA background when profiling your EV-associated microRNA with exosome miRNA profiling kits or qPCR panels.
Exosome proteomics sample preparation
Prepare EV protein cargo for LC-MS/MS analysis using exosome proteomics sample prep kits, without co-isolating bovine serum protein.
Nanoparticle tracking analysis and particle counting
Get an accurate baseline particle count for your culture system, since standard FBS alone contributes around 10^9 to 10^10 particles per ml.
Conditioned media preparation for downstream EV isolation
Generate clean conditioned media as a starting point for exosome isolation from serum, plasma or culture supernatant.
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Exosome Depletion
Exosome-Depleted FBS & EV Depletion Kits for Clean Cell Culture
Frequently asked questions
Nanoparticle tracking analysis of pre- and post-depletion aliquots confirms particle reduction. A validated protocol typically achieves greater than 90% reduction in particle concentration. Additional validation by Western blot for tetraspanin markers (CD9, CD63) on a pelleted post-depletion aliquot assesses the reduction in EV-associated proteins. Because greater than 90% depletion still leaves residual particles, characterise preparations as EV-depleted rather than EV-free. Growth factor content should remain comparable to undepleted FBS.
Extended ultracentrifugation (100,000 x g for 18 hours, or repeated centrifugation steps) does deplete EVs. But it also depletes growth factors, particularly TGF-beta, which reduces cell viability and proliferation in some cell lines. Affinity-column or magnetic-bead depletion kits are designed to retain growth factors, while removing EVs more selectively. The ready-to-use Exosome-depleted FBS Media Supplement avoids the ultracentrifugation problem entirely.
Store at -20 °C in aliquots sized for one-time use. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles degrade growth factors and can generate protein aggregates that appear as particles in NTA analysis. Most protocols recommend aliquoting into working volumes immediately after depletion, and using within six months of preparation.
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