Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 3, 2026

Generation of Heterogeneous Drug Gradients Across Cancer Populations on a Microfluidic Evolution Accelerator for Real-Time Observation
Published on: September 19, 2019
Evidence of drug-response heterogeneity rapidly generated from a single cancer cell
Rong Wang1, Chengmeng Jin1, Xun Hu1
1Cancer Institute, A Key Laboratory For Cancer Prevention & Intervention, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
Abstract:
One cancer cell line is believed to be composed of numerous clones with different drug sensitivity. We sought to investigate the difference of drug-response pattern in clones from a cell line or from a single cell. We showed that 22 clones derived from 4T1 cells were drastically different from each other with respect to drug-response pattern against 11 anticancer drugs and expression profile of 19 genes associated with drug resistance or sensitivity. Similar results were obtained using daughter clones derived from a single 4T1 cell. Each daughter clone showed distinct drug-response pattern and gene expression profile. Similar results were also obtained using Bcap37 cells. We conclude that a single cancer cell can rapidly produce a population of cells with high heterogeneity of drug response and the acquisition of drug-response heterogeneity is random.
Related Concept Videos
Treatment Resistant Cancers
Cancer Stem Cells and Tumor Maintenance
Cancer stem cells are thought to originate from tissue-specific normal stem cells or progenitor cells. The normal stem cells usually reside in...
Combination Therapies and Personalized Medicine
The combination of the drug acetazolamide and sulforaphane is a good example of combination therapy to treat cancer. The cells in the interior of a large tumor often die due to the hypoxic and...
Cancers Originate from Somatic Mutations in a Single Cell

