I am doing my research on electrospun scaffolds for tissue regeneration and my team will have it them tested for biocompatibility and cell proliferation soon. I'm not yet sure which cell line will be used but I came across several papers that use cancer cells for such tests. I don't have a background on cell testing but I do know that cancer cells can proliferate indefinitely in a culture without the need for additional growth factors unlike normal cells which makes things easier. But how can it provide evidence of compatibility when my application is solely for normal cells (i.e. scaffolds for skin cell regen.)? I mean will the results be the same for normal version of the cell?
Please enlighten me about this. Thank you
That is actually a good question. Usually cancer cells are on the brink to get into apoptosis so, even if they can proliferate, they can pretty fragile.
So i suppose that any contaminant might lead to their death because they can hardly do any damage control because all their process are turned to proliferation.
Besides, cancer cells in vitro need growth factors and all that is contained in the foetal bovine serum without which they die pretty quickly. But, as cancer cell proliferation depends highly on the matrix they grow on, they are pretty good to assess proliferation.
However, i would not be at ease to work with cancer cell lines to show biocompatibility. You can easily isolate primary cells from skin or work with primary epithelial cells or cells that are not cancerous but were immortalized. Those last ones are "normal" but are not limited by the number of proliferation cycles.
Dear Jean Raynell Bello
Cancer cells are immortal. Therefore, their use is unsuitable for assessing biocompatibility. According to the international standard, fibroblast cells are used for this task such as L929, SNL and etc. All biological tests must conduct according to ISO standards 10,993–5:1999 (Biological evaluation of medical devices; Part 5: tests for in vitro cytotoxicity). You can read the following articles:
Flexible magnetic polyurethane/Fe2O3 nanoparticles as organic-inorganic nanocomposites for biomedical applications: properties and cell behavior
Preparation and evaluation of polyurethane/cellulose nanowhisker bimodal foam nanocomposites for osteogenic differentiation of hMSCs
I agreed to both fellas as particular cell types should refer you final goal/future application. If you are targeting skin the most cells commonly used including fibroblasts and keratinocytes. In our centre, we isolating primary cells from patient's tissues and direct use to specific testing in vitro.
Please do visit this link for you to get some idea for assessing biocompatibility evaluation on biomaterials
https://scholar.google.com.my/citations?user=nmTqmqQAAAAJ&hl=en
Thanks.
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