Drug-resistant breast cancer stem cells enriched through one-dose chemo-therapy convey drug tolerance.

The murine basal-like mammary carcinoma cell line H8N8 was transplanted into syngeneic WAP-T mice and growing tumors were subjected to a single dose of combination chemotherapy (100 mg/kg body weight cyclophosphamide, 5 mg/kg BW doxorubicin and 100 mg/kg BW 5-FU, short CAF). Mice of the control group were treated with one injection vehicle solution. Three cohorts of animals were generated: control, remission, and regrowth group. Tumor cells were isolated from lesions of each group, purified by flow cytometry to remove non-tumor cells and debris, and finally subjected to whole transcriptome analysis by mRNA-sequencing.