Tumor stem cells more closely mirror the phenotype and genotype of primary human tumors than do cancer cell lines. Homo sapiens

The concept of tumor stem cells (TSCs) provides a new paradigm for understanding tumor biology, although it remains unclear whether TSCs will prove to be a more robust model than traditional cancer cell lines. We demonstrate marked phenotypic and genotypic differences between primary human tumor-derived TSCs and their matched glioma cell lines. TSCs derived directly from primary glioblastomas harbor extensive similarities to normal NSC and recapitulate the genotype, gene expression patterns and in vivo biology of human glioblastomas. By contrast, the matched, traditionally grown tumor cell lines do not secondary to in vitro genomic alterations. These findings suggest that TSCs may be a more reliable model than many commonly utilized cancer cell lines for understanding the biology of primary human tumors. Analysis of gene expression data is described in Lee et al., Cancer Cell, 2006. Keywords: Gene expression profiling of primary GBM tumors and their derivative cells Overall design: To further understand the differences between NBE- and serum-cultured GBM cells, we generated gene expression profiles of NBE-cells, serum-cells, their derived xenograft tumors, and the original GBMs taken directly from the patients. NBE- and serum-cultured GBM cells from different passages were also included in the analyses in order to evaluate the potential effects of in vitro passage number on gene expression.