Culture cancerous cells using normal cells.?

Question

Hello. I am trying to make a batch of homemade cancer cells, and (god forbid) I'm fresh out of pregnant women. All I have is a couple of petri dishes, some AGAR, a scalpel, human flesh (for culture. I'm not a flesh easting zombie), and my (abnormally huge) brain(JK). I need to know: Is it possible to deform, mutate, or otherwise mess with the stuff that times cell replication and the cell cycle? In other words, are there other ways to transform normal cells into cancer cells without means of in-vitro fertilization and all that high-tech stuff that costs a million dollars? EX. I heard (rumors) that sunlight causes cancer if the radiation is extreme. So could my cells do a little sunbathing and undergo cancerous division?

Thanks. E-mail me if you have any other questions. I would like the price range to be between $0-50, if at all possible.

Answer 1

Ring a biological supplier and ask for HeLa cells. These are immortal (almost) cells form the cervical cancer of a long dead lady called Henrietta Lacks. You can then culture them to your heart's content. All perfectly legal. I'm not sure about the cost, but they may have other immortal cell lines available.

Sunlight causes cancer, but sometimes this takes years.
Alternatively, you could go and work at a dermatology clinic and "borrow" the melanoma samples before they are sent for pathology tests. This, however, is quite illegal.

Answer 2

It's not uncommon in mammalian tissue culture to refer to cell line derived from cancers as transformed. So in this case, yes the term transformed does refer to the fact that the cells have lost control of the cell cycle. A good example is the He-La cell line, which was derived from a woman with cervical cancer in the early 1950's. The term transformed also can be used to refer to cells that have taken up exogenous DNA, such as bacteria that have undergone electroporation to take up a plasmid. An immortalized cell line has the gene for Telomerase activated (telomerase extends the length of telomeres during cell division. Without active telomerase the telomeres become progressively shorter with every division). Many cancerous cell lines have active telomerase.