Cell fusion in tumor progression: the isolation of cell fusion products by physical methods.

Background: Cell fusion induced by polyethylene glycol (PEG) is an efficient but poorly controlled procedure for obtaining somatic cell hybrids used in gene mapping, monoclonal antibody production, and tumour immunotherapy. Genetic selection techniques and fluorescent cell sorting are usually employed to isolate cell fusion products, but both procedures have several drawbacks.

Results: Here we describe a simple improvement in PEG-mediated cell fusion that was obtained by modifying the standard single-step procedure.

The use of non-physiological conditions to isolate fetal cells from maternal blood.

Fetal cells are always present in maternal blood starting in the first trimester of pregnancy, however a rapid, simple, and consistent procedure for their isolation for prenatal non-invasive genetic investigation is still lacking. Sensitivity and recovery of fetal cells is jeopardized by the minute amount of circulating fetal cells and their loss during the enrichment procedure. We report here a single-step approach to isolate fetal cells from maternal blood which relies on the use of non-physiological conditions to modify cell densities before their separation in a density gradient and in a newly developed cell separation device.