• Question: Do you use real cancer cells from humans when the cancerous part gets removed or is it from animals or genetically made? Is there ever shortage? Is there any restrictions with it ?

    Asked by u11bradshawt to Kat on 21 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Kathryn McMahon

      Kathryn McMahon answered on 21 Mar 2013:


      Hi u11bradshawt! I use both. We use some human cancer cell lines. These are cells that were originally taken from a cancer removed from a patient, and have been grown in a dish, sometimes for many years. A really good example of a cell line like this is HeLa cells, which scientists have been growing for over 60 years!
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
      We get some new tumours as well – we work with doctors who can give us a little piece of a tumour that they have removed from a patient. I don’t grow the cells from the fresh tumours as this is actually very tricky (every cancer grows slightly differently, so you need to feed them different things and treat them very carefully) – we have scientists here who do this though. We also take pieces of the tumours and put them in blocks of wax so we can take thin slices of the tumour to look at under the microscope.
      There are lots of restrictions when you work with samples that have come from patients. You have to get permission from the government for your experiment – you have to get something called ethical approval where they check that you’re not exploiting the patient. The doctor then has to get written permission from the patient that we can use their tumour (or other body part) for experiments.
      Because of this, it can be quite hard to get enough tumour material for your experiments.

      We also grow some tumour cells that have come from mice. We use these because we work with a group in America who would like to grow these cells in mice to make an actual tumour, which we can then analyse. You can also grow human tumour cells in mice, but you have to use mice that have no immune system, otherwise their immune cells will kill the tumour.

      There is a shortage of tumour material for scientists to use. Sometimes this is because of all the permission you need to get. Its also hard if you work on a relatively rare cancer or if you work on metastases (cancers that have spread to other parts of the body). For example, its relatively easy (once you’ve got all the permission sorted!) to get a sample of a breast cancer as this will be removed as part of the patients treatment. However, if that cancer spreads to the brain, its not normally removed (its treated with drugs or radiation instead), and the only way you could get a sample would be after the patient has died. The family of the patient may not want you to have their brain (which is completely understandable, as they will be very upset) and even then, if you are taking the sample after the patient has died, you will probably not be able to grow cells from it. This is why we sometimes have to use mice if we want to look at metastases!

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