A Detailed Mammosphere Assay Protocol for the Quantification of Breast Stem Cell Activity

Since the discovery that neural tissue contains a population of stem cells that form neurospheres in vitro, sphere-forming assays have been adapted for use with a number of different tissue types for the quantification of stem cell activity and self-renewal. One tissue type widely used for stem cell investigations is mammary tissue, and the mammosphere assay has been used in both normal tissue and cancer. Although it is a relatively simple assay...