VB
Valeria Beretta
  • Department of Experimental Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Unit of Immunotherapy of Human Tumors, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Italy
Research fields
  • Cancer biology
Melanoma Stem Cell Sphere Formation Assay
Self-renewal is the ability of cells to replicate themselves at every cell cycle. Throughout self-renewal in normal tissue homeostasis, stem cell number is maintained constant throughout life. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) share this ability with normal tissue stem cells and the sphere formation assay (SFA) is the gold standard assay to assess stem cells (or cancer stem cells) self-renewal potential in vitro. When single cells are plated at low density in stem cell culture medium, only the cells endowed with self-renewal are able to grow in tridimensional clusters usually named spheres. In the recent years, SFA has also been used also to test the effect of several drugs, chemical and natural compounds or microenviromental components on stem cells self-renewal capacity. Here we will illustrate a detailed protocol to assess self-renewal of human melanoma stem cells, growing as melanospheres.
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