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Metastasis (in vivo assays)

Metastasis still remains the most serious problem for an efficient treatment of cancer despite all current success in surgery, radiology and chemotherapy.

EPO offers different test models to characterise the effect of novel antimetastatic drugs including:

Syngeneic models

Spontaneous metastasis after surgical removal of the primary tumour:

B16 melanoma, C26- and C38 colon carcinoma, Lewis lung carcinoma, P388 leukaemia and M5076 reticulum cell sarcoma.

Xenograft models

Metastasis after i.v., orthotopic, or i.c. transplantation of cells:

MDA-MB-435-, MT-3- and 4296–breast carcinoma, MV-3 melanoma, HT29- and Ls174T – colon carcinoma , several leukaemia

Methods for detection of metastases:

Quantification of tumour nodules in organs of interest (gross visualisation)
Quantification of human tumour cells by PCR (Becker M., et al.; Brit. J.Cancer 2002, 87: 1328-1335)
Detection of tumour manifestation by staining with specific antibodies

Metastasis (in vitro assays)

On the cellular level, different aspects of metastasis can be investigated in a customer demanded way, including

Characterisation of tumour cell ligand expression (e.g. sLe^X) 

Investigation of adhesion processes of tumour cells to endothelial cells

Investigation of interplay of tumour cells with platelets and/or leukocytes (complex formation in vitro)

Characterisation of mobility and invasiveness of tumour cells using transwell plates

Aggregate formation between HT-29 colon carcinoma cells (blue), platelets (green) and liposomes (yellow-red) after platelet activation in vitro. These aggregates are assumed to force tumour cell resettlement after circulation as a prerequisite for metastasis formation.

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