Animal Models of Bone Metastasis

Abstract

Bone is one of the most common sites of cancer metastasis in humans and is a significant source of morbidity and mortality. Bone metastases are considered incurable and result in pain, pathologic fracture, and decreased quality of life. Animal models of skeletal metastases are essential to improve the understanding of the molecular pathways of cancer metastasis and growth in bone and to develop new therapies to inhibit and prevent bone metastases. The ideal animal model should be clinically relevant, reproducible, and representative of human disease. Currently, an ideal model does not exist; however, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the available models will lead to proper study design and successful cancer research. This review provides an overview of the current in vivo animal models used in the study of skeletal metastases or local tumor invasion into bone and focuses on mammary and prostate cancer, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and miscellaneous tumors that metastasize to bone.

Evaluation of antitumor activity and cardiac toxicity of a bone-targeted ph-sensitive liposomal formulation in a bone metastasis tumor model in mice

“…The larger effect observed with 99m Tc-BBN 7–14 may be explained by spreading of the tumor to the muscle adjacent to the tumor cell inoculation site. The growth pattern of the tumor observed in this model is in agreement with that previously described in literature [17]. These results were further confirmed by BLI which showed a higher accumulation of the tumor in the areas composed mainly by spongeous bone, which is more accessible for tumor cells to spread, associated to dissemination of tumor cells into the medullary channel of the bone [18].…”

Application of post-genomic techniques in dog cancer research

“…32 Spontaneously occurring mammary gland cancer provides a good model for human breast cancer. [33][34][35][36] The knowledge of the molecular aspects of mammary gland tumours in dog has been very recently reviewed. 37,38 A recent investigation analysed in molecular depth the homologies and the differences between mammary gland cancers of dogs and humans by combining whole-genome sequencing, whole-exome sequencing, RNA sequencing, and microarray analysis of simple and complex carcinomas.…”

Generation of Luciferase-expressing Tumor Cell Lines

“…Bioluminescence has been used for a variety of in vivo application including the noninvasive imaging of reporter gene expression (Herschman, 2004), studying circadian rhythms (Southern and Millar, 2005), imaging cerebral strokes (Vandeputte et al , 2014), and for tracking genetically engineered T cells (Costa et al , 2001; Cheadle et al , 2010). Perhaps the field where bioluminescent cell lines have been most applicable is oncology where they have been instrumental for the monitoring tumor growth (Jenkins et al , 2005; Brennan et al , 2016; Byrne et al , 2016) and tumor metastasis (Rosol et al , 2003; Simmons et al , 2015) in mouse models. While some subcutaneously implanted tumors can be detected by palpation and measured with calipers, these methods are not effective for monitoring metastases or tracking tumors that disseminate widely, such as hematological malignancies that commonly grow in the bone marrow, lymph nodes and spleen.…”