Cancer cell cultivation: A review

Cancer development is a multi-step process gradually started from a normal to a malignant phenotype. Molecules that regulate tumour cell survival are an essential prerequisite for development of targeted approaches to cancer treatment. Such targeted approaches use tumour/cancer cells cultivated in vitro or as xenografts. In vitro cultivation of cancer cells produced cell lines, have been used in study of cancer biology, because they are easy to handle and can be grown almost in infinite quantities. Fresh tumour tissue in highly proliferating form is the first requisite to establish a new cancer cell line. It is widely accepted that cancerous cells are immortal and it is difficult to establish new cancer cell line. Evidence from experiments demonstrated that this difficulty has a genetic origin, as primary cancer cells did not completely lose their tumour suppressor pathways, which are expressed during cell cultivation. Other difficulties are also noticed during establishment of long-term or permanent cultivation of cancerous cells from fresh surgical tumour samples. Therefore, new techniques are needed to overcome these problems. In vitro model, using organ culture or xenograft can be a suitable tool for cancer research. Although this approach benefits if the epithelial/endothelial cells are cultured in a relatively physiologically normal microenvironment, the culture period during which the organ remains viable is limited. Furthermore, obtaining starting material is a major obstacle particularly if the tissue is of human origin. Animal models are widely used in research and have the advantage that experimental procedures may be carried out in living organisms. In this review, we have summarised pros and cons of cancer cell cultivation.