In this article, we will describe the benefits to using tissue cultures to study medications used for treating cancer cells.
For the treatment of cancer, chemotherapy is very effective. It can be able to kill all fast-growing cells in the body. However, this treatments are often short-term with many side effects. Scientists are working together to combat these issues by developing medications that are targeted specifically to the cancer cell instead of killing everything around it as well.
The targeted medications are working well in treating cancer. However, these medications do not treat all the cell types of the body. For example, they would not help to eliminate hair cells or bone cells that grows quickly throughout time.
A big step forward in research has been made by using tissue cultures obtained from patient’s tumors to study drug responses and interactions.
What is Cytotoxicity?
Cytotoxicity is the degree to which a chemical is toxic to cells. When testing cytotoxic drugs, it is important that identical cells are being applied in order to have an accurate representation of how the drug will affect an individual given its cytotoxicity.
Tissue cultures are used when doing experiments on cytotoxic drugs because they are easy to control and very accurate representations of the body.
Benefits of using tissue cultures to study medications
- Tissue cultures are isolated cells grown in an artificial environment. They can be differentiated cells, which have evolved to perform special functions, or undifferentiated cells that have not yet attained their final form. For example, embryonic stem cells are totipotent, meaning that they can become any type of cell in the body, whether it be bone, muscle, nerve, etc.
- Tissue cultures are used to study cytotoxic drugs because when differentiating cells are exposed to cytotoxic drugs they can tell scientists how specific chemicals interact with differentiated cells and what kind of impact they have on them. If undifferentiated cells are exposed to cytotoxic drugs, it tells scientists what impact the drug has on the body as a whole.
- Tissue cultures can also be used to test the effects of different drugs that may counteract cytotoxicity. For example, if a substance is found that blocks or inhibits cell death then we know that this chemical will be effective in preventing cell death. If the chemical is effective, it can be further tested to see if there are negative side effects that come along with prolonging cell survival.
- By studying cytotoxicity through tissue cultures scientists have been able to block many types of cancer cells that would otherwise be incurable. Cytotoxic drugs can also induce cancer cell apoptosis, or programmed cell death, which can stop a tumor from dividing and multiplying. This is especially important when inhibiting the development of certain types of cancer, such as leukemia.
- The custom-made nature of tissue cultures makes them a great model for testing cytotoxicity on humans. In theory if scientists test different cytotoxic drugs on tissue cultures they will be able to tell how the cells in the human body would react to each drug. The benefit of this is that scientists can use safer drugs when studying different types of cancer because it reduces the risk for side effects and complications.
- If scientists are testing cytotoxic drugs, then they need an effective way to study cell death. Tissue cultures have been used as a model to study cell death because scientists can obtain an accurate representation of how the cells in the human body will be affected by cytotoxic drugs.
- Tissue culture studies help find new therapies for cancer and other life-threatening diseases. By studying cytotoxicity through tissue cultures, scientists can learn what chemical interactions lead to cell death and thus develop new drugs that will inhibit these interactions.
Use of Tissue Cultures to study Cytotoxicity
The use of tissue cultures to study cytotoxicity has led to the development of many different therapeutic drugs used to treat cancer cells in humans. For example, L-asparaginase is an enzyme that breaks down asparagine amino acids which are required for the growth of cancer cells. Without these amino acids, tumor cells cannot divide and multiply so L-asparaginase is often used in the treatment of leukemia.
Similarly, Adriamycin, or doxorubicin, is a red-pink cytotoxic drug that interacts with cell membranes to induce apoptosis. It is currently used in the treatment of many types of cancer, including breast and testicular cancers because it targets cells actively dividing so it only affects cancer cells and not healthy cells.
Conclusion: Effects of Tissue Cultures
Tissue cultures are very useful when studying cytotoxicity because they can be used to determine the effect that various chemicals have on different cell types. The use of tissue cultures has led to the development of many cytotoxic drugs used to treat cancer in humans.