Figure 1.

Workflow for cancer stem cell (CSC) isolation and banking. Newly isolated CSCs (top panel) are validated by STR identification and matching with normal patient’s tissue, by tumorigenicity assessment in immunodeficient mice and xenograft comparison with primary patient’s tumor, and, finally, by stem cell marker analysis (lower left panel). Following banking, CSCs are exome sequenced, analyzed by RPPA analysis, screened for drug sensitivity in vitro and used to produce xenograft models to allow preclinical drug validation (lower right panel). Abbreviations: RPPA, reverse phase proteomic array; STR, short tandem repeats analysis.