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Abstract

Lung cancer is the most prevalent malignant tumor in the world. Metastasis of the disease causes death in lung cancer patients. Recent study has shown that multiple cascades of gene defects occur in lung cancer. In this report, we established a novel H1299/EGFP tumor model to determine whether H1299 transfected with the enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) gene in vitro and xenotransplanted into SCID mouse lung would permit the detection of lung cancer micrometastasis in vivo. We demonstrated that EGFP-transduced H1299 cells maintained stable high-level EGFP expressions during their growth in vivo. EGFP fluorescence clearly demarcated the primary seeding place and readily allowed for the visualization of distant micrometastasis and local invasion at the single-cell level. Small metastatic and locally invasive foci, including those immediately adjacent to the tumor's leading invasive edge, were almost undetectable by routine hematoxylin and eosin staining and immunohistochemistry. The GFP tagged lung cancer model is superior for the detection and study of physiologically relevant patterns of lung cancer invasion and metastasis in vivo.

Application of GFP imaging in cancer

“…Cancer cell trafficking in blood vessels was originally observed in real time after injection of GFP-expressing cancer cells in the tail vein of mice. 25 Lung carcinoma cells 26 and mammary cancer cells, 27 both expressing GFP, interacted with the blood-vessel wall as seen via skin window chambers in rodents. Angiogenesis was induced by as few as 60-80 cancer cells.…”

An overview of GFP and its application in biology

“…FUCCI (fluorescence ubiquitious cell cycle indicator) 3D confocal imaging unveiled the cessation of S-, G2-and M-phase cancer cells having green FP expressing nuclei and migration initiation of G0-, G1-phase cancer cells containing red FP labeled nuclei (Sakaue-Sawano et al, 2008;Yano et al, 2014). Migration and trafficking of cancerous cells through blood-vessel as well as mammary and lung cancer cells' interactions with blood-vessel wall were observed by studying GFP expression via a technique known as skin window chambers in rodents (Chishima et al, 1997;Huang et al, 2002;Li et al, 2000). Contact of colon cancer cells with vessel-lumen was also observed via GFP-labeling (Hoffman, 2015).…”