Evidence of Distinct Tumour-Propagating Cell Populations with Different Properties in Primary Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Figure 2
Diagrams showing the different clonogenic potential of the 3 primary HCC cell lines sorted for specific membrane markers. Columns (mean and standard deviation of 3 independent experiments) represent the percentage of cells which gave rise to a colony. P<.05 was considered statistically significant (Chi square test). The lower part of the figure reports the expression of the sorting marker on each generated colony. All hcc-1, hcc-2 and hcc-3 colonies were positive for EpCAM regardless of whether they were generated by EpCAM positive or negative sorted cells. The colonies generated by sorting of the other specific markers, i.e. CD44, Thy-1 and CD56, did not show any modification of the expression of these markers.