Authors
Creative Bioarray
Summary
Tumor cells occupy the core position in tissue culture. First, tumor cells are relatively easy to culture, and tumor cell lines are the most numerous in currently established cell types. Besides, tumor is the biggest threat to human disease. As a result, tumor cell culture has become an indispensable technology in understanding the mechanism of cancer and developing anticancer drugs. This guide is designed to serve as a basic introduction to tumor cell culture, including media, subculturing, cryopreservation and contamination.
Introduction
Tumor cells are significantly different from normal cells in vivo and in vitro, in terms of morphology, growth value, genetic traits and so on. The difference defined by two tumor cells cultured in vitro are fairly small but not exactly the same. The tumor cells in culture have the following characteristics:
Immortality
The growth and death of normal cells are strictly controlled. Cells use extracellular signals to regulate the rate and location of division. Generally, apoptosis can be triggered by normal life program. On the contrary, tumor cells provide a mechanism that allows them to bypass the cell cycle checkpoints and inhibit apoptosis. In cancerous cells mitosis can take place continuously, generating an over-abundance of cells to form tumors.
Materials
Normal cells will divide until they are in contact with the neighboring cells, then they will stop growing at that point and form a monolayer cell. While cancer cells typically lose this contact inhibition, causing them to pile up and form tumor.
Normal cells normally located at a fixed position until they died. But tumor cells are able to spread into or invade nearby tissues. In addition, some tumor cells can break off and travel to distant places in the body through the blood or the lymph system and form new tumors far from the original tumor.
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