Abstract
In many tumor types, only a minor pool of cancer cells—the so-called cancer stem cells—is able to colonize distant organs and give rise to secondary tumors. In humans, the liver is one of the main target organs for many metastatic tumor types, including colorectal cancer. However, mouse tumour models only rarely spontaneously metastasize to the liver. Therefore, reliable in vivo experimental metastasis assays are crucial to study cell seeding capacity and the mechanisms controlling these metastatic stem cell properties. Here, we describe an intrasplenic injection model that mimics the process of liver metastasis occurring in cancer patients.
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Acknowledgments
A.S.-M. was supported by an SNSF Ambizione career award (PZ00P3_154751), and P.O-M was supported by the University of Nottingham. This protocol was developed in the Huelsken’s lab, so we would like to thank past and current members of this lab for their help in developing this method, specially to Prof. Joerg Huelsken.
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Dafflon, C., Santamaría-Martínez, A., Ordóñez-Morán, P. (2020). An Intrasplenic Injection Model for the Study of Cancer Stem Cell Seeding Capacity. In: Ordóñez-Morán, P. (eds) Intestinal Stem Cells. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2171. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0747-3_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0747-3_20
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