When to Use Primary Cells and When to Use Cell Lines?

First, we need to understand the difference between primary cells and cell lines.Primary cells are cells straight taken from tissues with no passages. Cell lines are cells which are immortalized , representing similar features of primary cells. A cell line has at least one passage.  

To put in a simple way, cell lines are easy to work with and immortal, which means one can have them forever. Scientific community tends to considered cell lines as standard for certain researches in the past. Although , cell lines do not represent all proprieties occurring in vivo, but its convenience for use has been proved by many labs. 

Primary cells are the ideal tools for research , but they also have many limitations. They are not well characterized, with a limited life span, slow in proliferation. Frustratingly, the use of primary cells can arouse ethical issues as these cells are directly taken from animals or human bodies. Moreover, with every passage, the characteristics of primary cells change. Therefore, for consistency of results from experiment to experiment and from year to year, cell lines would be preferable , but the premise is that they are handled properly. 

However, in vitro studies on cell line showed that cells reveal continuous changes through passages due to the effect of in vitro culture condition. Freezing down of cells for storage reasons affects the cell population which kill some subclone and allows other to overgrow. Some scholars believed that primary cell culture is more suitable for use to simulate the in-vivo condition. As a matter of fact, ex-vivo culture is more closer to body real condition than working on line cells. Therefore primary culture is advisable for they can give more relevant and accurate results especially in studies in vivo. Besides, primary cells are useful for other studies from cell differentiation, co-cultures, ECM studies and so on. What’s more , now there are many biotech companies, say Creative Bioarray , offering primary cells ,which can help to save lab time and cost. 

Both cells have its own advantages and disadvantages, and the choice of using what kind of cell lines should based on the factors such as the type of research, time, cost and etc.Once taking those factor in consideration , you will understand what will be the right choice for your research.

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