colon cancer cell lines vs normal colon epithelial cells - (Oct/30/2012 )

I'm new to the area of colon cancer research and would appreciate any advice. I have a question regarding normal human colon epithelial cells. I understand currently there is no commonly used nontransformed human normal colon epithelial cell line. In such a case, how are qPCR results normalised when comparing the expression of a gene between different colon cancer cell lines. In other cancer types, when the expression of a gene is compared between different cancer cell lines, the gene expression in a cancer cell line is usually normliased and compared to a normal nontransfromed human non-canceroue epithelial cell line. In colon cancer I understad there is nontransformed IEC-6 cells, derived from rat small intestinal crypt. Can these be used as internal control?

Thank you

Often normalization is done by comparing to a so called "housekeeper" gene such as GAPDH or B2M that are relatively stably expressed by all cells. You can also get normal tissue and use that as a control.