I am researching lncRNAs in pediatric cancers - neuroblastoma and osteosarcoma, and I am unsure of a control cell line to use. Ideally, i was hoping to verify differential expression among the different cell lines, but I figured it would be worthwhile trying to use normal cell lines as reference for my stats. However I read that 'normal' brain cell lines are not available to procure, and that a plausible control will have limited passages, so I am wondering if either HEK293 or wi38 cell lines may be suitable.
With the normal bone cell lines, I am hoping to use either of the 2, could anyone give some insight on which might be better? Given that I am working with pediatric cell lines, I would like to be certain of a good control. Thank you!
Hello,
as you said you should use primary cell lines derived from normal tissue as a control for your experiments but primary cell lines are volatile and after about 20 passages change morphology and die. That is why immortalized cell lines derived from cell lines derived from normal tissue are used. I do not have experience with wi38 cell line but looking at the literature it should be more suitable for your experiment then HEK293. I have worked with those and I wouldn't use is as a control but they can be used for your purposes. My advice is to try to get a primary cell line, make a large number of stocks in liquid nitrogen for further experiments and do the tests on those. I have done cytotoxicity tests with primary and immortalized normal fibroblast cell lines and results are usually close enough but with some tested mixtures I have 2-fold difference in result.
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