Journal: PLoS ONE

Article Title: Proteomic Comparison of MCF-7 Tumoursphere and Monolayer Cultures

doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052692

Figure Lengend Snippet: (a–e) Representative 4x photomicrographs of passage 2 spheres five days after culture in LacNAc containing sphere media. MCF-7 spheres cultured with LacNAc show a more differentiated morphology than those not cultured with LacNAc with most cells no longer forming spheres and attaching to the culture flask, as is seen under adherent conditions. (a) no treatment (No Tx), (b) 0.1 mM, (c) 0.3 mM, (d) 1 mM, and (e) 3 mM LacNAc. Bars represent 100 μm. LacNAc inhibits sphere forming frequency for MCF-7. Cells were cultured for 5 days in the sphere forming assay, 5000 cells per well. (f) A one-way ANOVA with a post-test for linear trend between number of spheres generated and amount of LacNac added demonstrated a significant decreasing trend (line over columns), *** p ≤0.0001. Experiment repeated twice, representative results shown. Passage 2 MCF-7 spheres pre-treated with LacNAc have a slower tumour size enlargement then control cells (g). MCF-7 spheres were cultured in LacNAc at 3 mM for 7 days (closed squares) or left untreated (closed circles). Four immunocompromised mice (per group) were injected subcutaneously with 2×10 6 cells. Mice were monitored for tumour growth twice weekly. A Gompertz fit model of the data indicated significant differences in tumourigenicity between treated and untreated groups (*** p <0.001). Error bars represent SEM.

Article Snippet: For tumour growth assessment, a Gompertz fit of the data was performed (GraphPad Prism software, V 5.0).

Techniques: Cell Culture, Generated, Control, Injection