MSC stimulate ovarian tumor growth during intercellular communication but reduce tumorigenicity after fusion with ovarian cancer cells

Functional changes were investigated in vitro and in vivo following spontaneous fusion and hybrid cell formation in co-cultures of primary human mesenchymal stroma/stem-like cells (MSC) with human SK-OV-3 ovarian cancer cells. Lentiviral fluorescence-labeled MSC with eGFP and ovarian cancer cells labeled with mcherry resulted in dual-fluorescing hybrid cells. Double FACS sorting and single cell cloning revealed two different aneuploid hybrid populations (SK-hyb1 and SK-hyb2) A total of 4 different total RNA samples was subjected to microarray analysis according to a single-color design.