Establishment and study of highly metastatic pancreatic cancer model in nude mice

Abstract

Objective To study a method of orthotopic transplantation model of pancreatic cancer with high success rate and high transfer rate. Methods This research used the MIA PaCa-2 cell lines to establish a nude mouse orthotopic transplantation model of pancreatic cancer.The cancer cells were subcutaneously injected into 30 nude mice, after being tumor, removed subcutaneous tumor with sterile conditions, grew into nude mice pancreas tail in situ.Morphological and biological features, and metastasis of the transplanted tumor were studied after 4, 6 and 8 weeks. Results In this study the rate of tumor was 100%,and there was no obvious difference from the cells morphology of pancreatic tumor between 4 weeks and 8 weeks with hematoxylin and eosin(HE) staining, there were poorly differentiated pancreatic cancer cells.The distant metastasis rate was 0% in postoperative 4 weeks by the microscopic observation, distant metastasis in nude mice was 100% in postoperative 8 weeks, including local lymph node metastasis and distant organ metastasis, there were extremely significant statistical differences(P< 0. 05).The hepatic metastasis rate was 10% only. Conclusion That showed tumor of 4 weeks belonged to pancreatic cancer early in the disease process, and tumor of 8 weeks belonged to the late stages of pancreatic cancer disease process, it is high success rate, high transfer rate and low hepatic metastasis rate of using this method to build the orthotopic transplantation model. Key words: Pancreatic cancer; Nude mouse; Orthotopic model; Highly metastatic