Department of Surgery, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Nat Protoc. 2012 Jan 5;7(1):128-42. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2011.424.
Primary lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related death in the Western world, and the lung is a common site for recurrence of extrathoracic malignancies. Small-animal (rodent) models of cancer can have a very valuable role in the development of improved therapeutic strategies. However, detection of mouse pulmonary tumors and their subsequent response to therapy in situ is challenging. We have recently described MRI as a reliable, reproducible and nondestructive modality for the detection and serial monitoring of pulmonary tumors. By combining respiratory-gated data acquisition methods with manual and automated segmentation algorithms described by our laboratory, pulmonary tumor burden can be quantitatively measured in approximately 1 h (data acquisition plus analysis) per mouse. Quantitative, analytical methods are described for measuring tumor burden in both primary (discrete tumors) and metastatic (diffuse tumors) disease. Thus, small-animal MRI represents a novel and unique research tool for preclinical investigation of therapeutic strategies for treatment of pulmonary malignancies, and it may be valuable in evaluating new compounds targeting lung cancer in vivo.
原发性肺癌仍然是西方世界癌症相关死亡的主要原因，肺部是胸腔外恶性肿瘤复发的常见部位。癌症的小动物（啮齿动物）模型在开发改进的治疗策略方面可以发挥非常有价值的作用。然而，检测小鼠肺部肿瘤及其随后对原位治疗的反应具有挑战性。我们最近描述了 MRI 作为一种可靠、可重复和非破坏性的方法，用于检测和连续监测肺部肿瘤。通过将呼吸门控数据采集方法与我们实验室描述的手动和自动分割算法相结合，可以在每只小鼠大约 1 小时（数据采集加分析）内定量测量肺部肿瘤负担。描述了用于测量原发性（离散肿瘤）和转移性（弥漫性肿瘤）疾病中肿瘤负担的定量、分析方法。因此，小动物 MRI 代表了一种用于治疗肺部恶性肿瘤治疗策略的临床前研究的新型独特研究工具，它可能对评估针对肺癌的新化合物在体内的价值。
