A complete defined and animal-component free cell culture solution designed for the selective culture of malignant cells derived from primary tumors or patient-derived xenografts.
In vivo tumors consist of a heterogeneous population of cancer cell types that include tumor-initiating slow-growing cancer stem cells (CSC), fast-growing aggressive cancer cells, tumor-associated cancer cells, and immune cells. Unlike some other cell types, CSCs have distinct properties such as aberrant metabolism, anoikis resistance, and differentiation ability. And while CSCs only make up for a very small fraction of the tumor mass, they initiate and drive tumor development and, in most cases, trigger metastasis and relapse – making them a promising therapeutic target.
CSCs display a slow proliferation compared to other cancer and non-cancer cell types within the tumor mass and so are easily overgrown by other cell types. In biopsies, for example, CSCs are often overgrown by fibroblasts or aggressive cancer cells, neither of which can induce tumors. In cases like this, long-term cultivation and isolation of CSCs become difficult or impossible.
To achieve the best conditions and avoid CSCs being overgrown, it’s important to take their distinct properties into account and use media developed specifically for their culture and maintenance.
PromoCell´s Primary Cancer Culture System (PCCS) is a part of the cancer media toolbox, a complete cell culture solution for the isolation and long-term culture of cancer cells. The PCCS is ideal for CSCs from human primary tumor biopsies, patient-derived xenografts (PDX), or established cancer cell lines. The PCCS is flexible enough to be used for most cancer types.
The PCCS is more than a medium: designed to specifically isolate and maintain CSC, the PCCS supports the aberrant metabolic traits of malignant cells. The PCCS is therefore a functional medium. As this principle is not tissue-specific, the PCCS can be used to isolate CSCs from most tumor types.
Key benefits
Perform up to five CSC isolations with one medium kit
Gain access to pure and stable CSC cultures from primary tumors, patient-derived xenografts (PDX), and established cell lines
Enables long-term growth support and multiple passaging
Fig. 1: Overview of the selective isolation of primary cancer cells from (human) tumor samples using the Primary Cancer Culture System. The PromoCell system makes it possible to reliably deplete non-malignant cells from the cell culture while supporting the maintenance of cancer cells and malignant cell heterogeneity. The optional establishment of cancer cell lines is indicated.
The Primary Cancer Culture System can also be used for other applications, e.g. enriching cell lines or depleting of stromal cells and other non-cancerous cells form established primary cancer cell cultures.
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