Increased metastatic capacity of breast cancer cells after interaction and hybrid formation with mesenchymal stroma/stem cells (MSC)

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 MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells. Lentiviral fluorescence-labeled MSC with eGFP and breast cancer cells labeled with mcherry resulted in dual-fluorescing hybrid cells. Double FACS sorting and single cell cloning revealed two different aneuploid male hybrid populations (MDA-hyb1 and MDA-hyb2) A total of 4 different total RNA samples was subjected to microarray analysis according to a single-color design.