Bioluminescence Imaging Views

General Goods

Purpose: Tumors grafted s.c. or under the mammary fat pad (MFP) rarely develop efficient metastasis. By applying bioluminescence imaging (BLI) technology, the MDA-MB-435-HAL-Luc subrenal capsule (SRC) model was compared with the MFP model for disease progression, metastatic potential, and response to therapy.

The SRC model was developed for assessing tumor growth from a clinical patient and the response to therapy in a mouse model (22). Because the kidney is a highly perfused organ, tumors growing under the SRC have the advantage of accessing nutrients, drugs, and other substances in circulation. Previous studies have shown that grafts in the SRC exhibited reproducible growth rates and retained the morphologic and malignant characteristics of the parent tumors (23). The SRC model was applied to predict the clinical response to chemotherapy (24, 25). Although SRC tumor models have been widely used in the past, the assessment of end points was often limited to the analysis of selected tissues at the completion of an experiment rather than during the longitudinal progression of the disease course. We applied noninvasive bioluminescence imaging (BLI) technology to circumvent this issue.

Bioluminescence is the process of light emission in living organisms. Bioluminescence imaging utilizes native light emission from one of several organisms which bioluminesce. The three main sources are the North American firefly, the sea pansy (and related marine organisms), and bacteria like Photorhabdus luminescens and Vibrio fischeri. The DNA encoding the luminescent protein is incorporated into the laboratory animal either via a viral vector or by creating a transgenic animal.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have shown that bioluminescence imaging can be used to determine the effectiveness of cancer drugs that choke off a tumor’s blood supply. The technique requires luciferin to be added to the bloodstream, which carries it to cells throughout the body. When luciferin reaches cells that have been altered to carry the firefly gene, those cells emit light.[2]