Limiting Dilution Tumor Initiation Assay: An In Vivo Approach for the Study of Cancer Stem Cells.

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a small subpopulation of self-renewing cancer cells that are present within tumors. Calculating the frequency of tumor-initiating cells is important in the assessment of the number of CSCs present in a cell population. In this chapter, we present a protocol developed for quantification of CSCs from breast cancer tumors that can be adapted to CSCs from other types of tumors.