Patent ID: 11920163
Assignee: nan
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC C  G | IPC C  G

Claim 0:
1. A method for culturing circulating epithelial tumor cells from a body fluid from a human or animal affected by an epithelial tumor, comprising:
(i) separating cells present in the body fluid and containing at least one nucleus in each case from the body fluid without selection of certain of these cells;
(ii) transferring said separated cells to a cell culture medium; and
(iii) culturing said transferred separated cells under cell culture conditions in said cell culture medium containing at least an animal serum, a growth stimulator and one growth factor, wherein the growth stimulator is insulin and hydrocortisone and wherein the growth factor is Epidermal growth factor, and wherein the cells are cultured for at least 24 hours in suspension at least until a subpopulation of tumor cells, which does not require adherence to a surface for proliferation, has formed spheroids by proliferation, and wherein tumor cells which have formed the spheroids during culturing are separated from the cultured tumor cells by separating the spheroids formed during culture.