Future Medicine - Full Text Cancer pharmacogenomics: do cancer cell lines have the right stuff?

Note: cell 'lines' (test tube) vs  patient tumors

"....But with all the effort and money being put into pharmacogenomics research using cancer cell lines, it is appropriate to ask: how faithfully do cancer cell lines represent the tumors that they are being used to model?"

"Next, do cancer cell lines behave similarly to the tumors they are intended to model to be useful for pharmacogenomics research? First, cancer cell lines are more appropriate for assessing the response to cytotoxic anticancer drugs, rather than the response to newer biologic agents which exert their anti-tumor effects via mechanisms other than eliciting cell death. Second, an important consideration to keep in mind when using cancer cell lines for pharmacogenomics research is that cell lines are generally more sensitive to cytotoxic agents than solid tumors.

"Another important question is: how well does testing in cancer cell lines predict responses in clinical trials with real world patients? When assessing whether there is a correlation between drug activity in Phase II clinical trials and preclinical activity in cancer cell line models, one study found that preclinical activity did not correlate with Phase II response, with the exception of non-small-cell lung cancer [5].

However, ..........It is becoming more and more apparent that the process of culturing cells in vitro alters the genetic make-up of the cancer cell lines."