High prevalence of side population in human cancer cell lines

Maximilian Boesch; Alain G Zeimet; Heidi Fiegl; Barbara Wolf; Julia Huber; Helmut Klocker; Guenther Gastl; Sieghart Sopper; Dominik Wolf

doi:10.18632/oncoscience.300

High prevalence of side population in human cancer cell lines

Oncoscience. 2016 Apr 10;3(3-4):85-87. doi: 10.18632/oncoscience.300. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Maximilian Boesch^{1

2}, Alain G Zeimet³, Heidi Fiegl³, Barbara Wolf³, Julia Huber², Helmut Klocker⁴, Guenther Gastl², Sieghart Sopper^#², Dominik Wolf^#⁵

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Immunobiology, Kantonsspital St. Gallen, 9007 St. Gallen, Switzerland.
² Internal Medicine V, Medical University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
³ Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Medical University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
⁴ Department of Urology, Medical University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
⁵ Medical Clinic III, University Clinic Bonn (UKB), 53127 Bonn, Germany.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Cancer cell lines are essential platforms for performing cancer research on human cells. We here demonstrate that, across tumor entities, human cancer cell lines harbor minority populations of putative stem-like cells, molecularly defined by dye extrusion resulting in the side population phenotype. These findings establish a heterogeneous nature of human cancer cell lines and argue for their stem cell origin. This should be considered when interpreting research involving these model systems.

Keywords: cancer cell line; drug resistance; drug transporter; side population; stem cell.