How to get a hold of some cancer cells?

[octaviasplay]

Novice here looking for a way to obtain cancer cells for some experiments in my home lab.

 

Is it possible for a lay person to obtain cancer cells?

 

Thanks

 

- O

 

bump

[ecoli]

besides for the obviously dangerous way... not that I know of, and even if you could you'd have to keep them alive. ie - have the necessary equipment to perform experiments on them.

[Phi for All]

How about feeding a lab rat nothing but pesticide-laced Doritos for a few months? You could start out with small doses until it built up an immunity to the toxins, but eventually the loss of protective enzymes would lead to its cancerous death.

[John Cuthber]

If you wait you have something like a 1 in 3 chance of finding you have more cancer cells than you want.

[Rev Blair]

I can roll you a smoke.

[CharonY]

Experiments with human cell lines (or even cultivation) require a biosafety level 2 lab (mostly due to the danger of viral infection).

[lucaspa]

Novice here looking for a way to obtain cancer cells for some experiments in my home lab.

 

Is it possible for a lay person to obtain cancer cells?

 

Thanks

 

- O

 

bump

 

American Type Culture Collection. You can find them on the web. They are a national repository for cancer cell lines.

[CharonY]

Yeah, but as I said, even if you can get hold of them, they are too dangerous to use them at home.

[lucaspa]

Yeah, but as I said, even if you can get hold of them, they are too dangerous to use them at home.

 

That wasn't the question. That's how you get them: buy them from ATCC.

 

The level 2 biosafety cabinet is not so much to protect you from the cancer cells as to protect them from all the microbes around. If Octaviasplay wears exam gloves, a lab coat, and does not drink the culture media then he/she will be OK. Now, without training in sterile technique and a level 2 biosafety cabinet, the cells won't be OK for long. Octaviasplay is going to find that he/she is working with bacterial or fungal cultures instead of cancer cells.

[CharonY]

Uhm, no it is a common misconception but biosafety cabinets are mainly designed to protect YOU. The laminar and directional flow are mainly designed to prevent aerosols escape the cabinet (Biosafety one cabinet are as clean as that of level two, but they protect you less). There are clean benches with horizontal blowers that are better protecting your samples from contamination, but they do not fulfill the requirement of biosafety two benches. There are systems that integrate both, but again, biosafety 2 is meant to protect the user. Moreover biosafety 2 standards are not only restricted to a cabinet, but also requires the fulfillment of certain safety features within the lab. Again, to protect you. That is why for instance plant cell lines do not require biosafety two, even if are as sensitive to contamination.

 

Also you dangerously underestimating the dangers of human cell lines. There are viruses that has been extracted from well established cell lines like HeLa. While actual infection in laboratories is extremely rare, an uninstructed person might easily infect himself.

So even if the question was not related to safety procedures I think it is important to tell uninformed people about potential dangers.