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. 1985 Nov;52(5):701–705. doi: 10.1038/bjc.1985.246

Selection of tumour cell subpopulations occurs during cultivation of human tumours in soft agar. A DNA flow cytometric study.

K M Tveit, E O Pettersen, S D Fosså, A Pihl
PMCID: PMC1977230  PMID: 4063145

Abstract

To examine whether selection of tumour cell subpopulations occurs during cultivation in soft agar, we compared in 23 human tumours of different histological types the DNA content of cells from colonies formed in soft agar (method of Courtenay and Mills, 1978) with that of the original tumour cells. The ploidy as well as the fraction of cells in S phase were determined from DNA histograms after staining of the nuclei with a propidium-iodide procedure and flow cytometric recordings. In 8 of 17 aneuploid tumours analysed, specific aneuploid subpopulations disappeared during cultivation or new aneuploid populations, not demonstrable in the original cell suspensions, appeared in the colonies. In 9 cases identical aneuploid populations were found in the colonies and the tumours. In one of 6 diploid tumours examined, aneuploid cell populations not revealed in the original cell suspension, were found in addition to diploid cells, whereas 5 tumours gave rise to colonies containing a purely diploid population. The results show that in a variety of human malignant tumours cultivation in soft agar may select specific aneuploid tumour cell populations.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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