The most devastating aspect of cancer is the emergence of metastases in organs distant from the primary tumor. Knowing the molecular mechanisms of metastasis is one of the most important issues in cancer research which will help in prevention, diagnosis and therapy of metastasis.
Unless we understand the molecular and physical conditions that give rise to metastasis, we can't recreate an in vitro model which reflects these conditions. 3D models incorporating cells from the tumour microenvironment (macrophages, fibroblasts, etc), cytokines, etc could be the first step.
Hello Mr. Abhishek Tyagi
I just had an experiment the lung cancer metastasis of using B16F10 melanoma cell which was activated in the in vivo status via i.v. injection. In that case, the cell line is not a primary cell, but this type is similar with the primary conditon (in my opinion). Therefore, I thought that try using the activated cancer cell line, if you mimic the condition of primary cancer cell.
Your sincerely
I assumed you have several primary tumor cell lines and you want to know which one has metastatic properties. Am I right?. Well I was in the same predicament and the way to solve was s orthotropic injection of each cell line into (genetically matched background mice) allograft syngenic type. Then we wait for 8 weeks and we sacrifice all the animals and dissect lung,liver etc. then H/E staining and CK19 IHC were used to find micro metastasis. This way you can know which cell line has the highest metastatic potential.
Best.
HI Abhishek,
Our work in isolating cancer stem cells from fresh tumor would indicate that these are the cells that have metastatic potential. In vitro assays show that only cancer stem cells are invasive through matrigel, the bulk tumor cells are not. So I would argue that CSC isolation would be a way of isolating the metastatic cells. See our paper from last summer.
Kind regards,
Steve
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