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Mammosphere formation assay from human breast cancer tissues and cell lines
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 13:47 authored by Ylenia Lombardo, Alexander de Giorgio, Charles R Coombes, Justin Stebbing, Leandro CastellanoSimilar to healthy tissues, many blood and solid malignancies are now thought to be organised hierarchically, with a subset of stem-like cancer cells that self-renew while giving rise to more differentiated progeny. Understanding and targeting these cancer stem cells in breast cancer, which may possess enhanced chemo- and radio-resistance compared to the non-stem tumor bulk, has become an important research area. Markers including CD44, CD24, and ALDH activity can be assessed using fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) to prospectively isolate cells that display enhanced tumorigenicity when implanted into immunocompromised mice: the mammosphere assay has also become widely used for its ability to retrospectively identify sphere-forming cells that develop from single stem cell-like clones. Here we outline approaches for the appropriate culturing of mammospheres from cell lines or primary patient samples, their passaging, and calculations to estimate sphere forming efficiency (SFE). First we discuss key considerations and pitfalls in the appropriate planning and interpretation of mammosphere experiments.
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- Published
Journal
Journal of Visualized ExperimentsISSN
1940-087XPublisher
Journal of Visualized ExperimentsExternal DOI
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97Department affiliated with
- Biochemistry Publications
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- No
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- Yes
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2018-06-15Usage metrics
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