According to pathologists, Tan Ince, certain tumors act a lot like bee colonies in some ways. In the tumor, each cancer cell has a specific role and just a portion of the cells act as the so-called queens, like those found in bee colonies. These queen cells have the unique capability of sustaining themselves in a general state and starting new tumors. The said cells can also split and bring into being the “worker” cells that constitute the mass of the tumor. These queens are actually the cancer stem cells.

Now Robert Weinberg, a member of Whitehead lab, was able to culture such stem cells in a Petri dish. He achieved such through the isolation and transformation of a particular population of cells harvested from human breast tissue. After being injected with just 100 of these altered cells, laboratory mice acquired tumors that traveled to distant tissues in a process called metastasis.

Weinberg, who is also an MIT professor of biology, said that the operational definition of a cancer stem cell is the capacity to instigate a tumor, so these queen cells are the cancer stem cells.
Ince did not initially plan to engineer these powerful cells. As a post-doctoral scientist for the Weinberg lab and gynecologic pathologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he was simply striving for the construction of breast cancer models that resemble real human tumors under the darkfield microscopy and behave like those observed in many patients.

In more than 90 percent of human breast tumors, cancer cells look like those lining cavities of the body. A trained pathologist can identify the similarities with the use of a microscope. In laboratory researches before, the cancer cells that were engineered from normal breast cells looked different. Ince suspected that previous tissue culture engineers were transforming the wrong type of cells.

Ince, who is now an independent investigator at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, formulated a process for a new culture medium that is chemically defined. As such, the culture to a different type of human breast cell, which normally dies in the tissue culture process, was made possible. He was able to convert the breast cell into a cancer cell by incorporating specific genes through the standard procedure.
In tissue culture procedures, an inverted phase contrast microscope or darkfield microscopy is used in the observation of the cells being grown.

An inverted phase contrast microscope or a darkfield microscopy is a type of microscope that is equipped with its light source and condenser set at the top, facing down above the stage. On the other hand, the objectives and turret of a darkfield microscopy are set below the stage, facing up.

A good darkfield microscopy must be designed with a stage that sets the specimen excellently in order for the details of the specimen to be viewed better. The condenser of a darkfield microscopy should be pre-centered, fashioned to permit a long working distance, and is adjustable for the most advantageous inspection. Moreover, the stand of a darkfield microscopy must is ergonomically designed. Also, a darkfield microscopy must be very durable. Furthermore, the optical and mechanical pieces of the darkfield microscopy must meet the specifications of the experiment and the researcher.Read more on this subject