Dear researchers
I wish to knew the reason why researchers use cancer cell lines for assessing the cytotoxicity. Do they mimic the normal cells of human ? If yes then how ?
Hi Samsher,
The main idea is the killing the cancer cells to treat the tumors. when we try to find cytotoxic agents against cancer cells, we wish to find an agent harmless as possible as against normal cells. Therefore cytotoxicity evaluation must be done by paralel experiments with both cancer cell lines and normal cell lines, if it is possible.
Best
Since they express some fetures and functions of hepatic cells (similar phenotype) and they can be easly nanded than hepatocytes...
I think I missed the point you made it microbial compounds assessed on HepG2/J774. Very sorry for that. I think the logical explanation for me is here:
So HepG2 cell line has well-differentiated hepatocyte characters those can reflect the antimicrobial compounds' effect on the liver. Because the liver acts as a filtration barrier for the xenobiotics. If the compound is not water soluble, liver metabolic enzymes convert the compound to its harmful metabolites those may cause liver toxicity. So you have to test if the compound is harmful to the liver and whether they get metabolized or not. If they get metabolized, so the activity of the compound on microbes could change in the mammalian system (human body). The compound itself could have antimicrobial activity while its metabolite could not.
For J774, it is a monocyte-macrophage cell line. If the macrophage cells get affected by the antimicrobial compound, the innate immunological response will decrease. So the therapy will be less effective for those microbes which are also eliminated by macrophages.
Happy new year
Thanks Dr. Stefano for your valuable answer. Is this reason is sufficient that culture time is less so we use, as there are lot of differences in cancerous cells and normal hepatic cells ?
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