[freedrull]

What is the control? Do cancer cells normally live if they are taken out of the body?

[saiya-jin]

Yes, look ie at HeLa cell line, continuously cultured cancer cells from patient taken in 1951. Many labs around the world use them.

[wasdfff]

You still have to immortalize the cell line. NIH3T3 cells were immortalized by culture conditions. Others are immortalized with viral treatment. The end result is the cell line is similar, but not the sams as the source. Take a primary tumor out of a patient and culture it and it will slowly die over a few days or weeks.