Abstract

AN INSIGHT ON THE IDENTIFICATION OF CANCER STEM CELLS USING NOVEL IMMUNOLOGICAL AND MOLECULAR STRATEGIES

Wisam Hatem Abdullah Alrubaye* and Acharya Nagarjun Pyde

ABSTRACT

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are defined as a population of cells present in tumours, which can undergo self-renewal and differentiation. Identification and isolation of these CSCs using putative surface markers have been a priority of research in cancer. With this background we selected pancreatic normal and tumor cells for this study and passaged them into animal tissue culture medium. Further staining was done using alkaline phosphatase and heamatoxilin staining. Blue to purple colored zones in undifferentiated pluripotent stem cells and clear coloration in the chromatin material indicated pancreatic cells. Further studies on the cell surface marker CD 44 were done using ELISA. For this, the protein was extracted from cultivated normal and tumor pancreatic cells and absorbance was taken in ELISA reader. However, there was no significant difference in optical density values obtained with normal and tumor pancreatic cells indicating further studies are required for upregulation of CD44 in tumor cells. Reverse Transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) amplification of insulin growth factor binding protein 5 (IGF-BP5), showed negative result with pancreatic tumor, indicating there is no gene expression in tumor cell.

Keywords: Cancer, Stem cells, ELISA, CD44, RT-PCR.