Abstract
Human tumour cell lines have played an important part in our understanding of cancer
and have been used extensively in the discovery and characterisation of new chemotherapeutic
drugs. A potential weakness of such cell lines is that they may have lost important
properties originally possessed in vivo, including potential targets for therapy. This review discusses how possible differences
between tumour cells in cancer patients and cell lines might be identified by the
use of short-term cultures of human tumour cells taken directly from cancer tissue,
termed here primary cultures. Cell-cycle time is one important difference between
tumours and cell lines and it is known that the cell-cycle times of primary cultures
cover the same wide range as estimated in vivo cell-cycle times. Because tumour cells have at least two pathways to cell death,
one from interphase and one from mitosis, changes in cell-cycle length can modify
the balance of such pathways. Responses of primary cultures to DNA-damaging drugs
and inhibitors of growth factor receptors also differ from those of cell lines, suggesting
that the process of developing a cell line can result in the loss of important cellular
responses. Without an appreciation of these changes our ability to discover new targets
for the development of improved cancer therapy may be jeopardised. The identification
of cell lines that preserve potential targets is an important goal in cancer biology
and research using primary cultures will help in this identification.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
December 23,
2003
Received in revised form:
December 2,
2003
Received:
September 30,
2003
Identification
Copyright
© 2004 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
