We are testing crude extracts taken from various parts of taro and comparing their cytotoxicity against prostate cancer. Question is, which of which is the best prostate cancer cell line in order to optimally show our results?
Hello John
Before selecting the cell line you need to have thorough information of the candidate drug. This is because various cell lines express surface receptors which can help in drug binding and subsequently bring about the action of the drug on the cells. Whenever the cell line is purchased the data sheet provides information about the cell line including the type of receptors present.
In your case you are testing the crude extract which is a mixture of a number of bioactive compounds including impurities. So you do not have any information about the drug you are testing. So in this case, you will have to use multiple cell lines for testing the crude extract. It won't be right to select one of the cell lines mentioned by you. I suggest you go through the NCI-60 Human Tumor Cell Line Screen which help to identify and characterize novel compounds with growth inhibition or killing of tumor cell lines.
Also please go through the research article below:
Article Guide for Selection of Relevant Cell Lines During the Evalua...
It will be of great help to you.
Best Wishes.
If you want to test the activity of your compounds against prostate cancer, I suggest using LNCaP and PC3 cell lines. Both cell lines are models for different stages of prostate cancer. The LNCaP cell line is hormone-sensitive and originally cultured from lymph node metastasis. PC3 is not hormone-sensitive and was originally cultured from bone metastases. In terms of prostate cancer progression, LNCaP represents an earlier stage of disease and PC3 a later stage of disease. DU145 was originally isolated from brain metastases which is very rare in prostate cancer so not very representative of common disease patterns. There has also been concern about contamination of the DU145 cell line in the past. I hope this is helpful.
Hi John,
Ideally you may want to try your drug on a few different cell lines at first, precisely because you do not know what mechanism the drug uses for cytotoxicity. Commonly used cell lines have specific mutations, so for example if your drug uses p53 in its mechanism of action, you want at least one cell that has normal p53 (PC3 has p53 deleted and DU145 has a constitutively active p53 mutant, whereas LNCaP has WT p53). This is just one example, the bottom line being that drug effect and sensitivity may vary greatly between cell lines. On the other hand, some cells are more difficult to maintain, so take that into account as well if you are not very experienced with cells (e.g. LNCaP are harder to cultivate than DU145 or PC3).
Good luck with your project!
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