Question ID: WS-37
Submitted by: Patrick Brown
February 4, 2011
Why is it that on the one hand cancers grow too much, die too reluctantly, and live where they don’t belong… and yet we are still incapable of maintaining them and studying them effectively ex vivo? Development of cell and tissue culture systems that support survival and preservation of in vivo phenotypes of cancer and normal cells would hugely improve our ability to carry out controlled experiments and detailed systematic observations of essential developmental and physiological processes. Mouse models and other animal models are a woefully inadequate, expensive and cumbersome alternative. What are the molecular, physical, structural requirements for establishment, survival, proliferation, differentiation, homeostasis of individual cells? What are the requirements for assembly of the complex architecture of tumor or normal tissue in an ex vivo system? Can we replicate them in the laboratory?
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