The short answer is NO. Most cancer cell lines, depending upon their age in culture and culture conditions exhibit different phenotypes and may carry different genetic alterations. Therefore, if the goal is to investigate genetic alterations that may be associated with metastasis phenotype, one needs to consider other options.
Cancer cell lines are the closest thing to a GOST. The best option is to use Cancer Stem Cells to study metastasis. You would have to use an efficient method to detect the metastatic cells (infected with a lentivirus carrying a GFP for example) would be very useful, to detect a small amount of cells on a fluorescent stereo microscope
NO，for primary tumors has many genetic back ground, but cell lines are derived from a single tumor cells and from a patient and may be cultured for many years which makes them have some gene alterations. The best way is to several primary tumor cells, but these cells should not be cultured for too many cell passages.
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