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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