Martinuzzi, E., Scotto, M., Enée, E., Brezar, V., Ribeil, J. A., Van Endert, P., & Mallone, R. (2008). Serum-free culture medium and IL-7 costimulation increase the sensitivity of ELISpot detection. Journal of immunological methods, 333(1-2), 61-70.
doi: 10.1016/j.jim.2008.01.003.

In this study, two parameters were found to greatly enhance detection sensitivity: use of human serum-free vs. serum-supplemented culture medium and addition of low dose IL-7. Incorporating both of these parameters into the ELISpot procedure proved capable of greatly amplifying the low grade CD8(+) T cell responses directed against beta-cell epitopes of type 1 diabetes patients, as compared to a previously optimized procedure using human serum-supplemented medium and low dose IL-2. A second HS-free synthetic medium (i.e., X-VIVO 15) gave similar results, i.e., it performed as well as AIM-V, better than HS-supplemented RPMI, and not differently with and without HS supplementation.

AIM-V and X-VIVO 15 culture medium are commercailly available products. Their precise formulation is proprietary.