Screen your compounds against cancer re-initiation cells (CRC)
While other cancer cells progressively lose the ability to proliferate, the theory of Cancer Re-initiation Cells suggests that a subpopulation of cells within a given tumor mass accounts for cancer self-renewal and long-term survival and possibly drug resistance and cancer metastasis as well, Therefore, understanding target biology and compound activity in this subpopulation may be a key to the future success of cancer treatment and drug development.
OncoSphereTM is a spheroid culture of cancer cells freshly isolated from patients or patient tumorgrafts. It has been shown that cells grown independent of cellular attachment are enriched for Cancer Re-initiation Cells, and have vastly superior ability to engraft immune-deficient mice. We offer in vitro compound screening service either in suspension culture or soft agar formats.
Spheroid cells can engraft nude mice at very low cell number
IC50 determination in OncoSphere assay