High prevalence of side population in human cancer cell lines

Cancer cell lines are essential platforms for performing cancer research on human cells. We here demonstrate that, across tumor entities, human cancer cell lines harbor minority populations of putative stem-like cells, molecularly defined by dye extrusion resulting in the side population phenotype. These findings establish a heterogeneous nature of human cancer cell lines and argue for their stem cell origin. This should be considered when interpreting research involving these model systems.