Bayarmagnai Battuya, Perrin Louisiane, Esmaeili Pourfarhangi Kamyar, Gligorijevic Bojana
Department of Bioengineering, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Cancer Biology Program, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Methods Mol Biol. 2018;1749:175-193. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-7701-7_14.
Cancer cell motility and invasion are key features of metastatic tumors. Both are highly linked to tumor microenvironmental parameters, such as collagen architecture or macrophage density. However, due to the genetic, epigenetic and microenvironmental heterogeneities, only a small portion of tumor cells in the primary tumor are motile and furthermore, only a small portion of those will metastasize. This creates a challenge in predicting metastatic fate of single cells based on the phenotype they exhibit in the primary tumor. To overcome this challenge, tumor cell subpopulations need to be monitored at several timescales, mapping their phenotype in primary tumor as well as their potential homing to the secondary tumor site. Additionally, to address the spatial heterogeneity of the tumor microenvironment and how it relates to tumor cell phenotypes, large numbers of images need to be obtained from the same tumor. Finally, as the microenvironment complexity results in nonlinear relationships between tumor cell phenotype and its surroundings, advanced statistical models are required to interpret the imaging data. Toward improving our understanding of the relationship between cancer cell motility, the tumor microenvironment context and successful metastasis, we have developed several intravital approaches for continuous and longitudinal imaging, as well as data classification via support vector machine (SVM) algorithm. We also describe methods that extend the capabilities of intravital imaging by postsacrificial microscopy of the lung as well as correlative immunofluorescence in the primary tumor.
癌细胞的运动性和侵袭性是转移性肿瘤的关键特征。两者都与肿瘤微环境参数高度相关,如胶原蛋白结构或巨噬细胞密度。然而,由于基因、表观遗传和微环境的异质性,原发性肿瘤中只有一小部分肿瘤细胞具有运动性,而且其中只有一小部分会发生转移。这给基于单个细胞在原发性肿瘤中表现出的表型来预测其转移命运带来了挑战。为了克服这一挑战,需要在多个时间尺度上监测肿瘤细胞亚群,绘制它们在原发性肿瘤中的表型以及它们向继发性肿瘤部位潜在归巢的图谱。此外,为了解决肿瘤微环境的空间异质性及其与肿瘤细胞表型的关系,需要从同一肿瘤中获取大量图像。最后,由于微环境的复杂性导致肿瘤细胞表型与其周围环境之间存在非线性关系,因此需要先进的统计模型来解释成像数据。为了增进我们对癌细胞运动性、肿瘤微环境背景与成功转移之间关系的理解,我们开发了几种用于连续和纵向成像的活体成像方法,以及通过支持向量机(SVM)算法进行数据分类的方法。我们还描述了通过对肺进行牺牲后显微镜检查以及对原发性肿瘤进行相关免疫荧光来扩展活体成像能力的方法。