• Question: What do you use to grow a human lung cell?

    Asked by katiechip98 to Stef, Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil on 13 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by anon-30036, rosieallard.
    • Photo: Stefan Piatek

      Stefan Piatek answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      Ah a wonderful question. At the moment I’m using cancer cells from the lung, which means that they grow forever! Later on I’ll move on to using lung cells taken from actual patients which I can only grow for a short amount of time.

      Basically you drop the cells into a plastic flask that is sealed from bacteria and mould, you then add a “soup” that they eat – it has all their protein, sugars and amino acids that they need to survive. Then you drop the flask into a box that’s 37ºC, it’s a perfect body temperature so your cells grow happily.

      Let me know if you’d like a picture of the flask and maybe the cells and I’ll see if I can put them up somewhere and link them to you!

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