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4 - Intravital Microscopy to Visualize Invasion and Metastasis

from MODELS AND TOOLS FOR METASTASIS STUDIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Cristina Hidalgo-Carcedo  and
Erik Sahai
Edited by
David Lyden ,
Danny R. Welch  and
Bethan Psaila
Cristina Hidalgo-Carcedo
Affiliation:
Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, United Kingdom
Erik Sahai
Affiliation:
UK London Research Institute, United Kingdom
David Lyden
Affiliation:
Weill Cornell Medical College, New York
Danny R. Welch
Affiliation:
Weill Cornell Medical College, New York
Bethan Psaila
Affiliation:
Imperial College of Medicine, London
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Metastasis is a complex process involving the acquisition of cell motility, intravasation into blood and lymphatic vessels, survival in the vasculature, extravasation, and proliferation in the new tissue (Chambers et al. 2002). The study of metastasis has been hampered by several factors, however. In most studies, metastasis is evaluated by the presence of large metastases in fixed material. Although this is a reliable measure of the overall process, however, it provides little information about the various steps of the metastatic process.

Furthermore, metastasis usually happens in anatomical locations that are difficult to access, which makes observation of the various steps in the process difficult. This problem is compounded by the fact that relatively few cells from a primary tumor will form metastases. A typical metastatic primary tumor will contain tens of millions of cells but give rise to a much smaller number of metastases. Therefore, finding the small numbers of cells actually involved in the process of metastasizing is not straightforward. One approach to overcoming these problems is to perform high-resolution optical imaging of live tissue containing metastatic cancer cells, a technique called intravital imaging (Condeelis and Segall 2003; Sahai 2007).

This chapter describes how intravital imaging has contributed to our understanding of metastasis. The intravital imaging techniques that can be used to visualize events within tumors are introduced, followed by a discussion of the ways in which these techniques have provided new insights into the process of metastasis.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cancer Metastasis
Biologic Basis and Therapeutics
 , pp. 40 - 54
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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