Abstract
Tumorigenicity refers to the ability of cultured cells to develop viable tumors in immune-deficient animals. The goal of this protocol is to illustrate tumorigenicity assay by subcutaneous tumor-cell-transplantation in nude mice. Target cells are transplanted to 6-week-old nude mice subcutaneously and the tumor growth is monitored over a period of observation or treatment. When tumor grows to a pre-determined size or by the end of the limited period, the nude mice will be euthanatized and the xenograft will be removed for further examination.
Keywords: Tumorigenicity, Nude mice, Tumor cell transplantation, Tumor xenograft model
Background
With high incidence and mortality, tumor is one of the leading causes of death and is a major public health problem. Extensive studies are conducted every year to explore tumor pathogenesis and anti-tumor therapy. In the process of cancer research, tumorigenicity assay in nude mice is a widely used experiment to monitor tumor growth in vivo (Giovanella et al., 1974). The most commonly used animal system for tumorigenicity assay is athymic nude mouse (Petricciani et al., 1973) where malignant cells can be transplanted either subcutaneously or subrenal-capsularly (van Meir, 1997). For cells with relatively low ability of tumorigenicity, take rate can be improved by irradiation (30-60 Gy) or implantation in Matrigel (Pretlow et al., 1991). Tumorigenicity assay provides a means of generating human cell derived tumor tissues for measurement of tumor cell malignancy and evaluation for anti-tumor drug efficacy.
Materials and Reagents
Equipment
Procedure
Data analysis
Notes
It is recommended to perform a small pilot study to determine the tumor take rate before the formal experiments. Additional cells and mice needed if the take rate is less than 100%.
Recipes
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by NSFC grants 81602641 to Dr. Xiaodi Zhao.
References
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