![A Window into Cancer's Spread]()
In a paper published November 28 online in Nature Methods, researchers describe a novel technique for permanently implanting a window into the chest wall of mice. Minimally invasive surgery allows mice to recover from surgery and anesthesia, breathe independently and live with the window for several weeks. Researchers can now repeatedly image the vasculature of the intact lung at single-cell resolution—converting the lung from sealed-off tissue observable only via fixed sections on slides to an accessible living organ. The windows should provide insight into many lung problems including asthma, acute sickle cell crisis and lung cancer. Using this new window the earliest processes involved in metastasis to the lung have been observed for the first time: tumor cells arriving in the lung, exiting from blood vessels (extravasation) and growing within the lung. This capability could revolutionize our understanding of cancer metastasis and its treatment. The study’s senior author is John Condeelis, Ph.D., professor and co-chair of anatomy and structural biology, and co-director of the Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center and the Integrated Imaging Program. Co-first authors are David Entenberg, M.Sc., senior associate in anatomy & structural biology; and surgery resident Sonia Voiculescu, M.D.
Posted on: Tuesday, December 19, 2017