Primary Cancer Culture System

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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
• Defined and animal component-free formulation

Components:

• Primary Cancer Cell Medium D-ACF, 250ml
• SupplementMix for 250ml
• NCCD surface treatment reagent, 2ml

In vivo tumors consist of a heterogeneous population of cancer cell types that include fast-growing aggressive cancer cells, tumor-associated cancer cells, immune cells, and tumor-initiating slow-growing cancer stem cells (CSCs). 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.

Our 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 commercially available 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.

Due to the PCCS specificity, other cancer cell types and stroma cells are progressively depleted during cultivation. This process usually takes a few to several weeks depending on the intrinsic growth rate of the CSC population within the sample.

The PCCS is highly standardized thanks to its defined and animal component-free (D-ACF) formulation, which ensures the lowest possible lot-to-lot variation and standardized cell culture conditions.

Finally, the PCCS can also be used for other applications, such as enriching cell lines with CSCs or depleting stromal cells and other non-cancerous cells from already established cancer cell cultures and tumor biopsies to identify CSC biomarkers.

View a list of references where this medium was used with other species and cell types.