Is cancer research flawed?

Question

Why do cancer scientists around the world use cell lines as their experimental models when the cell lines have different characteristics than actual malignant cells in humans have? For example, cell lines are undifferentiated but malignant cells are differentiated.
Answer Needed

Answer 1

Researches using stem cell lines is currently on the go. Cancer researchers are looking forward of benefiting from such stem cells as well. Why use cell lines ? They are experimenting to find a way to combat the disease and not just to study the nature of the malignant cells. It is said that the research would simulate the way a stem cell therapy might work in humans where an experimental model possesses the following features:
*It must accurately reflect the biology of human stem cells.
*It must be reproducible, allowing experiments to be credibly repeated.
*It must be time effective, allowing experiments to be completed, analyzed and repeated within a reasonable time period.

Answer 2

Your assumptions are flawed. Given the large numbers and varying characteristics of cell lines and malignancies, there will almost always be some overlap between the properties of "standard" cell lines and corresponding malignancies. This makes them a good, though usually approximate, model. There is also no generalization that cell lines are undifferentiated while malignant cells are differentiated. If anything, cell lines tend to be of a certain differentiated or partially differentiated type while malignancies tend to be partially de-differentiated.

Certain cell lines and human malignancies are one and the same. A common example of this is the HeLa cell, a cervical cancer cell line that was originally cultured from someone who died over 50 years ago but lives on because the cell line has gained immortality. Thus, cell lines can in fact be particularly good experimental models of particular malignancies.

Answer 3

Yeppers, it is inherently flawed.

But life goes on, and we fight the fight with the best tools we have.

Really, except for a few blood cell cancers, chemotherapy does NOTHING. the only way to heal is cold hard steel.