Saturday 4 January 2014

Human cell culture: Volume II: Cancer Cell Lines Part 2

This series of volumes is in celebration of Human Cell Culture. Our ability to grow nearly every type of normal and diseased human cell in vitro and reconstruct tissues in 3 dimensions has provided the model systems on which much of our understanding of human cell biology and pathology is based. In future, human cell cultures will provide the tools for tissue engineering, gene therapy and the understanding of protein function. The chapters in these volumes are written by leading experts in each field to provide a resource for everyone who works with human cells in the laboratory.

The cancer cell lines available are derived, in most cases, from the more aggressive and advanced cancers. There are few cell lines derived from low grade organ-confined cancers. This gap can be filled with conditionally immortalized human cancer cell lines. We do not know why the success rate for establishing cell lines is so low for some types of cancer and so high for others.

The histopathology of the tumor of origin and the extent to which the derived cell line retains the differentiated features of that tumor are critical. The concept that a single cell line derived from a tumor at a particular site is representative of tumors at that site is naïve and misleading. It is essential that representative cell lines are selected for study, and it is hoped that the chapters in these volumes will help appropriate selections to be made. The data on the molecular genetics of cancer cell lines has been difficult to gather as it is widely distributed throughout the literature and in a stage of transition. We do not yet know the identity of many of the altered genes for each type of cancer, or what their individual roles are in the progression of the disease.


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