{"doi":"10.1242/bio.050211","title":"A method to culture human alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma cell lines as rhabdospheres demonstrates an enrichment in stemness and notch signaling","abstract":"The development of three-dimensional cell culture techniques has allowed cancer researchers to study the stemness properties of cancer cells in in vitro culture. However, a method to grow PAX3-FOXO1 fusion-positive rhabdomyosarcoma (FP-RMS) - an aggressive soft tissue sarcoma of childhood - has to date not been reported, hampering efforts to identify the dysregulated signaling pathways that underlie FP-RMS stemness. Here, we first examine the expression of canonical stem cell markers in human RMS tumors and cell lines. We then describe a method to grow FP-RMS cell lines as rhabdospheres and demonstrate that these spheres are enriched in expression of canonical stemness factors as well as Notch signaling components. Specifically, FP-RMS rhabdospheres have increased expression of SOX2, POU5F1 (OCT4), and NANOG, and several receptors and transcriptional regulators in the Notch signaling pathway. FP-RMS rhabdospheres also exhibit functional stemness characteristics including multipotency, increased tumorigenicity in vivo, and chemoresistance. This method provides a novel practical tool to support research into FP-RMS stemness and chemoresistance signaling mechanisms.","journal":"Biology Open","year":2020,"id":84809,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9558,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":434425,"name":"Michael D. Deel","orcid":"0000-0002-8634-8109","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":345749,"name":"Yi-Tzu Lin","orcid":"0000-0002-2470-2053","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":434426,"name":"Kristianne M. Oristian","orcid":"0000-0003-0298-7323","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":434427,"name":"Nina Kuprasertkul","orcid":"0000-0003-4282-8589","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":434428,"name":"Katia C. Genadry","orcid":"0000-0002-0371-483X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":331201,"name":"Po‐Han Chen","orcid":"0000-0002-9471-4471","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277858,"name":"Jen‐Tsan Chi","orcid":"0000-0003-3433-903X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":434429,"name":"Corinne M. Linardic","orcid":"0000-0002-3257-2885","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":434424,"name":"Katherine K. Slemmons","orcid":"0000-0003-3700-5633","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":43,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:55:38.506333Z","pmid":"33372065","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}