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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Mol Cancer Ther. 2011 Jan 7;10(2):325–335. doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.MCT-10-0788

Figure 1. Tumour formation and anchorage independent growth of SP cells.

Figure 1

(a) When injected at low cell doses (50 or 100 cells, n=6-8 per group) in Matrigel™ into the NOD/SCID mammary fat pad, IGROV1 SP cells formed tumours more frequently than non-SP cell and produced significantly larger tumours over the duration of the experiment (Repeated measures ANOVA: p<0.05, error bars, standard errors). (b) Following FACS selection, SP (solid bars) and non-SP cells (open bars) were allowed to form spheroids in non-adherent culture for 18 days and were transferred to adherent plates to determine colony size. SP cells produced spheroids with a greater frequency and larger size than non-SP cells (c) SP and non-SP were selected by FACS and plated at low density in adherent culture, colonies were counted after ten days. Colony formation by non-SP was significantly greater than by SP (P=0.0092, paired Student’s t test). (d) IGROV1 SP and non-SP were sorted (biological replicates: n=4, mean purity 93.3%) and subsequently maintained in adherent culture through 8-10 passages. The cells were harvested at intervals and the size of the SP was measured by FACS. The SP fell rapidly and stabilized to levels similar to the original unsorted levels in all cases.