Genome-wide analysis of gefitinib-tolerant gene expression in single cell-derived clones

Analysis of gene expression profiles for gefitinib-tolerant cells derived from single cells. The hypothesis tested here was that a small population of cancer cells contribute to tolerance status in a bulk of EGFR mutated lung cancer cells. Results provide important infromnation of the tolerance to the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor, gefitinib, such as upregualtion of cancer-stemness related genes. A single cell was sorted by FACS into four 96-well plates. Two plates of the cells were treated with 0.4 uM and 2 uM gefitinib for 14 days. The other two plates were treated with DMSO. The suriviving clones treated and untreated were validated by IC50 assay. One growing clone sensitive to gefitinbi and five clones tolerant to gefitinib were randomly selected and used for RNA extraction.