In the body, when one develops a tumor, the microenvironment is very important. How do the cell cultures of cancer cells grow in the flasks without that micro-environment and only with the media and the serum?
Any suggested readings?
Thanks.
Cells are not put in culture flasks just with only serum. Cells are prepared/re suspended and added to culture dish/flask with cell culture medium which has nutrients and the serum is usually 10% (that is not just serum). Not only cancer, any other cells grow in flask with medium and 1-10% serum. Cells can grow in SFM for a day or 2, usually with Ham's F-12 Nutrient Mixture.
However, your question/thought is interesting. Any cells, not only cancer cells grown in dish/flask (in vitro) do not imitate those cells in situ.
Very good question. The real microenvironment of cancer cells in vivo is very harsh: acidic, hypoxic, poor in nutrients, high in CO2.
They adapt to all these and through clonal selection in a Darwinian fashion they live where other cells cannot.
When you put then in a flask everything is better for these die hard cells. Life is easy in the flask.
These are reasons why what you achieve in an experiment in the flask is not reproducible in vivo.
In many cases.
Whatever we achieve in the flask, sooner or later must be tested in vivo. Only after that you find out the difference between microenvironments
To answer your question:
They "thrive" in more favorable conditions when cultured in the lab. Since the culture media used, as Chandra was saying, has many nutrients that in some cases could or could not be found in the tumor microenvironment. As Tomas was saying, the tumor microenvironment can be very harsh and limited on resources. Thus, when growing them on the lab, it is like a picnic with "unlimited" resources for cancer cells.
To "add" to the discussion:
This way of culturing cancer cells is not the best for translational purposes, that's why many times, preclinical results can't be reproduced in the clinic.
Although animal models could mimicking in some way the tumor microenvironment, many differences still persist between the tumor microenvironment in a mouse and that from a human.
At the end it all depends on what you want to test and your hypothesis.
hope this helps
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