JoVE Logo

Sign In

A subscription to JoVE is required to view this content. Sign in or start your free trial.

Abstract

Cancer Research

Flow Cytometric Detection of Newly-formed Breast Cancer Stem Cell-like Cells After Apoptosis Reversal

Published: January 26th, 2019

DOI:

10.3791/58642

1School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 3Key Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine, Ministry of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 4Centre for Novel Biomaterials, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract

Cancer recurrence has long been studied by oncologists while the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Recently, we and others found that a phenomenon named apoptosis reversal leads to increased tumorigenicity in various cell models under different stimuli. Previous studies have been focused on tracking this process in vitro and in vivo; however, the isolation of real reversed cells has yet to be achieved, which limits our understanding on the consequences of apoptosis reversal. Here, we take advantage of a Caspase-3/7 Green Detection dye to label cells with activated caspases after apoptotic induction. Cells with positive signals are further sorted out by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) for recovery. Morphological examination under confocal microscopy helps confirm the apoptotic status before FACS. An increase in tumorigenicity can often be attributed to the elevation in the percentage of cancer stem cell (CSC)-like cells. Also, given the heterogeneity of breast cancer, identifying the origin of these CSC-like cells would be critical to cancer treatment. Thus, we prepare breast non-stem cancer cells before triggering apoptosis, isolating caspase-activated cells and performing the apoptosis reversal procedure. Flow cytometry analysis reveals that breast CSC-like cells re-appear in the reversed group, indicating breast CSC-like cells are transited from breast non-stem cancer cells during apoptosis reversal. In summary, this protocol includes the isolation of apoptotic breast cancer cells and detection of changes in CSC percentage in reversed cells by flow cytometry.

Explore More Videos

Keywords Flow Cytometry

This article has been published

Video Coming Soon

JoVE Logo

Privacy

Terms of Use

Policies

Research

Education

ABOUT JoVE

Copyright © 2024 MyJoVE Corporation. All rights reserved