A team of researchers may have eliminated a significant stumbling block in cancer research—the inability to sustain both normal and cancerous cells in the lab without altering their genetic material—with a lab technique that could accelerate biomedical research and personalized medicine (Am J Pathol 2012;180:599–607).

“Because every tumor is unique, this advance will make it possible for an oncologist to find the therapies that kill a patient's cancer cells and spare normal cells,” explains Richard Schlegel, MD, PhD, the study's senior investigator and chairman of the department of pathology at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of Georgetown University Medical Center.

Rather than prescribing a drug and waiting to see how the patient responds, Schlegel suggests, pathologists could grow the patient's cells in the lab, administer drugs to several different cultures either alone or in combinations, and determine which ones will likely be most effective. He says they...

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