Gene expression profiling of mouse mammary tumorspheres, mammospheres, and mammospheres induced to differentiate

Tumorpsheres and mammospheres were used to propagate mouse breast tumor-initiating cells and their normal stem/progenitor counterparts, respectively. Mammospheres induced to differentiate were used to model the more differentiated cells of the mouse mammary gland. We used microarrays to find differentrially expressed genes between tumorspheres, mammospheres, and mammospheres induced to differentiate Primary cells were isolate from either mouse mammary glands (FVB/N) or mouse mammary tumors and placed in stem cell media (MMTV-Neu [N2O2]. Spheres were passaged every 7 days for 3-5 passages and harvested for RNA isolation