We have normal in vitro facilities to culture the normal cancer cells. I want to work on cancer stem cells. Could you please suggest me what are the effective methods to maintain the cancer stem cells in lab.
Thanking you all.
Use materiel or soft-agar to culture stem cells of cancer. If you want to maintain the stem cells of cancers in your culture conditions, do not add or add very less concentration of growth factors, including wnt/noggin/jagged/rspondin, which could initiate stem cell differentiation.
There is no universal protocol to culture all kinds of cancer stem cells. For the different types of cancer specific culture conditions are rather required that will depend strongly on the organ of origin of the cancer stem cells.
The cells divide and spread over the surface of the dish. The inner surface of the culture dish is typically coated with mouse embryonic skin cells that have been treated so they will not divide. This coating layer of cells is called a feeder layer. The mouse cells in the bottom of the culture dish provide the cells a sticky surface to which they can attach. Also, the feeder cells release nutrients into the culture medium. We can also culture without feeder layers
Hope this helps
Agnieszka has mentioned a very critical point. Differences are known in the metabolic state of cancer stem cells. For instance, results indicate that breast cancer stem cells are more dependent on oxidative phosphorylation than on glycolysis when compared to their more differentiated counterparts.
Growth factor-free medium was found to be efficient for in vitro cultivation and growth of cancer stem cells while evaluating sphere forming culture conditions in hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines.
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