One of the most important problem in cell culture today is probably Mycoplasma contamination. Indeed all over the world the incidence of mycoplasmal contamination varies between 10% to 87% of cell culture according to different reports (4,7).

The potential sources of such a contamination are numerous: the laboratory personnel potential carrier of M.orale, M.fermentans, M.salivarium or M.hominis, the laboratory supplies including the equipment (laminar flow hoods, incubators, pipettes … not regularly disinfected), the reagents such as sera (M.arginini, A.laidlawii, M.hyorhinis ...) or new incoming cell lines already contaminated. Once a contamination is established, bacteria spread by aerosol droplet dispersion (2,4,6).
Contrary to other microbial contaminants, mycoplasmas do not cause consistent perceptible changes in a cell culture, e.g. rapid pH change or culture turbidity whereas their concentration in the supernatant can be typically in the region of 10⁶-10⁸ / ml (1,4). Nevertheless mycoplasmas are able to elicit various effects on cell biology : they may alter the synthesis of protein, DNA, RNA, introduce chromosomal aberrations, modify cellular morphology and antigenicity ... Moreover they are able to disturb some virus functions (3,4).

Consequently, Mycoplasma infected cells can lead to unreliable experiments or unsafe production of biological, biopharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

Fortunately for each problem there is a solution ! Here the solution is Plasmocin™.

Plasmocin™ has been developed specially to cure or to prevent mycoplasmal contamination of cell cultures.

Plasmocin™ is a new generation of bactericidal antibiotic preparation strongly active on Mycoplasma infected cells.

Since Plasmocin™ contains two newly developed bactericidal components acting on two different procaryotic targets: