TABLE 1.

Comparison of primary and immortalised cell lines.

Feature	Primary cells	Immortalised cell lines	References
Biological relevance	Higher	Lower	Mitra et al., 2013
Lifespan and proliferation	Limited	Unlimited	Gillooly et al., 2012
Molecular properties	Preserve characteristic cells’ behaviours and cross-talk between cells	Untypical cellular behaviours may occur	Carter and Shieh, 2010; Miserocchi et al., 2017
Phenotype	High heterogeneity	Lower heterogeneity	Ali et al., 2017
Genetics	Original genome	Altered genome, accumulation of genetic aberrations	Carter and Shieh, 2010
Relevance in vivo	Best experimental models for in vivo studies	Low relevance for in vivo studies	Verma et al., 2020
Handling	Needs optimised culture conditions and media	Established media from manufacturer	Weigand et al., 2016
Ethics	Require Ethical Commission approval and patient consent	Do not require additional documents	Petrini, 2012