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. 1988 Jul;58(1):8–12. doi: 10.1038/bjc.1988.151

Cultivation of human breast carcinoma in soft agar. Experience with 237 fresh tumour specimens.

L Ottestad 1, K M Tveit 1, H K Høifødt 1, J M Nesland 1, S Vaage 1, J Høie 1, E Lund 1, A Pihl 1
PMCID: PMC2246502  PMID: 3048354

Abstract

A total of 237 breast carcinomas have been studied with the Courtenay-Mills (C-M) soft agar method. Cell yields and plating efficiencies (PE) were recorded after various enzyme treatments. The highest cell yields and PEs were obtained with the combination of collagenase 0.5%, hyaluronidase 1000 IE ml-1 and DNase 0.1% and an incubation time of 2 h. Eighty percent of the specimens gave greater than 10 colonies, and 60% formed greater than 30 colonies permitting chemosensitivity studies. The C-M method gave significantly higher PEs than the Hamburger-Salmon (H-S) method. Hormone supplements (insulin, oestradiol, progesterone, hydrocortisone) and also reduced agar concentrations (less than 0.3%) gave marginal stimulation of colony formation. In chemosensitivity studies involving doxorubicin, vincristine and 4-OOH-cyclophosphamide, the C-M method gave dose-response relationships without plateaus.

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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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