Lung-residing metastatic and dormant neuroblastoma cells.

ABSTRACT: The mechanism by which dormant tumor cells can begin growing after long periods of inactivity and accelerate disease recurrence is poorly understood. The present study characterizes dormant neuroblastoma (NB) cells, as well as metastatic cells, which reside in the same organ microenvironment. A xenograft model of human NB consisting of variants that generate nonmetastatic local tumors in the orthotopic inoculation site and variants that generate lung metastatic NB (MetNB) cells was developed in our laboratory. The present study shows that lungs of mice inoculated with nonmetastatic NB variants contain disseminated neuroblastoma (DisNB) human cells. Both DisNB and MetNB variants expressed a similar tumorigenicty phenotype in vivo, whereas the MetNB variants produced a heavy metastatic load

SUBMITTER: Edry Botzer L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3123856 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature