Metastatic behaviour of primary human tumours in a zebrafish xenotransplantation model.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Aberrant regulation of cell migration drives progression of many diseases, including cancer cell invasion and metastasis formation. Analysis of tumour invasion and metastasis in living organisms to date is cumbersome and involves difficult and time consuming investigative techniques. For primary human tumours we establish here a simple, fast, sensitive and cost-effective in vivo model to analyse tumour invasion and metastatic behaviour.

Methods

We fluorescently labelled small explants from gastrointestinal human tumours and investigated their metastatic behaviour after transplantation into zebrafish embryos and larvae. The transparency of the zebrafish embryos allows to follow invasion, migration and micrometastasis formation in real-time. High resolution imaging

SUBMITTER: Marques IJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2697170 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature