A Label Retaining System to Capture Slow-Cycling Cancer Cells

Dormant or slow-cycling tumor cells can form a residual chemoresistant reservoir responsible for relapse in patients, years after curative surgery and adjuvant therapy. Slow-cycling cancer cells (SCCC) represent a cellular status rather than a cell population present in a minor proportion, even in growing tumors. We have adapted the pulse-chase expression of histone H2B fused to enhanced GFP (H2BeGFP) for labelling and isolating SCCC. SCCC show cancer-initiation potential and enhanced chemoresistance, and present a distinctive nongenetic and cell-autonomous gene expression profile shared across different tumor types. The use of our H2BeGFP pulse-chase method opens the possibility to study live SCCC in any growing tissue either cancerous or normal.