CD44 and ovarian cancer: In SKOV3 spheres, the percentage of cells with a CD44+ phenotype – which is associated with stemness in ovarian cancer cells –increased to 78.5%, from 11.8% in the SKOV3 parental cells(Fig.1b right).To evaluate alterations of OCSCs percentage in spheres in further investigation, CD24 and CD44 were used to identify OCSCs in 3AO and SKOV3 spheres, respectively.