Laboratory of Experimental Cancer Research, Department of Human Structure and Repair, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Cancer Research Institute Ghent (CRIG), Ghent, Belgium.
Clin Exp Metastasis. 2018 Dec;35(8):715-725. doi: 10.1007/s10585-018-9944-4. Epub 2018 Oct 28.
Metastasis is key to cancer mortality. Understanding its biology is vital for developing strategies to prevent and treat metastasis. Phenotypic assays to either study metastasis or evaluate anti-metastatic drugs are widely used in preclinical research. This technical note discusses the adherence of reporting essential experimental and methodological parameters in chemotactic invasion assays in vitro and spontaneous metastasis assays in vivo. Following the analysis of 130 recent (< 5 years) research papers, several shortcomings in reporting were identified. Therefore, we strongly argue to increase experimental rigor which should result in a significant improvement with respect to reproducibility of preclinical metastasis research.
转移是癌症死亡的关键。了解其生物学特性对于开发预防和治疗转移的策略至关重要。表型分析用于研究转移或评估抗转移药物，在临床前研究中广泛应用。本技术说明讨论了体外趋化侵袭试验和体内自发转移试验中报告基本实验和方法学参数的情况。对 130 篇近期（< 5 年）研究论文进行分析后，发现报告中存在一些不足之处。因此，我们强烈主张提高实验严谨性，这将显著提高临床前转移研究的可重复性。
