Alieva Maria, Rios Anne C
Cancer Genomics Netherlands, Prinses Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology;
Cancer Genomics Netherlands, Prinses Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology.
J Vis Exp. 2019 May 3(147). doi: 10.3791/59278.
Biopsies are standard of care for cancer treatment and are clinically beneficial as they allow solid tumor diagnosis, prognosis, and personalized treatment determination. However, perturbation of the tumor architecture by biopsy and other invasive procedures has been associated with undesired effects on tumor progression, which need to be studied in depth to further improve the clinical benefit of these procedures. Conventional static approaches, which only provide a snapshot of the tumor, are limited in their ability to reveal the impact of biopsy on tumor cell behavior such as migration, a process closely related to tumor malignancy. In particular, tumor cell migration is the key in highly aggressive brain tumors, where local tumor dissemination makes total tumor resection virtually impossible. The development of multiphoton imaging and chronic imaging windows allows scientists to study this dynamic process in living animals over time. Here, we describe a method for the high-resolution longitudinal imaging of brain tumor cells before and after a biopsy in the same living animal. This approach makes it possible to study the impact of this procedure on tumor cell behavior (migration, invasion, and proliferation). Furthermore, we discuss the advantages and limitations of this technique, as well as the ability of this methodology to study changes in the cancer cell behavior for other surgical interventions, including tumor resection or the implantation of chemotherapy wafers.
活检是癌症治疗的标准护理方法，具有临床益处，因为它能实现实体肿瘤的诊断、预后评估以及个性化治疗方案的确定。然而，活检及其他侵入性操作对肿瘤结构的扰动与对肿瘤进展的不良影响有关，需要深入研究以进一步提高这些操作的临床益处。传统的静态方法只能提供肿瘤的一个瞬间图像，在揭示活检对肿瘤细胞行为（如迁移，这一与肿瘤恶性程度密切相关的过程）的影响方面能力有限。特别是在侵袭性很强的脑肿瘤中，肿瘤细胞迁移是关键，因为局部肿瘤扩散使得完全切除肿瘤几乎不可能。多光子成像和慢性成像窗口的发展使科学家能够在活体动物中随时间研究这一动态过程。在此，我们描述一种在同一活体动物中对活检前后脑肿瘤细胞进行高分辨率纵向成像的方法。这种方法能够研究该操作对肿瘤细胞行为（迁移、侵袭和增殖）的影响。此外，我们讨论了该技术的优点和局限性，以及这种方法用于研究其他手术干预（包括肿瘤切除或化疗晶片植入）对癌细胞行为变化的能力。
