Pancreatic cancer stem-like cells display aggressive behavior mediated via activation of FoxQ1

A microarray approach was used to measure and compare whole genome expression in non-sorted cell population and in subsets of cultured cells, including stem-like cancer cell and non-stem like cancer cell populations, MiaPaCa-2 pancreatic cancer cells from culture were sorted by Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) using 3 markers: CD44, CD133 and EpCAM. Three resulting populations, i.e., not sorted, sorted triple positive and sorted triple negative, were analyzed. 4 cultures were sorted independently to arrive at 4 biological replicates.