Abstract
Quantifying tumor burden is important for following the natural history of orthotopic colon cancer and therapeutic efficacy. Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) is commonly used for such assessment and has both advantages and limitations. We compared BLI and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for quantifying orthotopic tumors in a mouse model of colon cancer. Among sequences tested, T2-based MRI imaging ranked best overall for colon cancer border delineation, contrast, and conspicuity. Longitudinal MRI detected tumor outside the colon, indistinguished by BLI. Colon tumor weights calculated from MRI in vivo correlated highly with tumor weights measured ex vivo whereas the BLI signal intensities correlated relatively poorly and this difference in correlations was highly significant. This suggests that MRI may more accurately assess tumor burden in longitudinal monitoring of orthotopic colon cancer in this model as well as in other models.
Highlights
Animal models, murine models, are widely used in cancer research and contribute critically to expanding our knowledge of cancer biology and assessing the efficacy of potential treatments before performing clinical trials
Tumor growth at the primary site was evident by Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as early as 1 week after cell inoculation (Figs 1A and 2A)
T2-weighted MR imaging better depicted orthotopic colon tumors compared to BLI in the mouse model, enabling longitudinal tumor monitoring in vivo
Summary
Murine models, are widely used in cancer research and contribute critically to expanding our knowledge of cancer biology and assessing the efficacy of potential treatments before performing clinical trials. Light-based methods such as BLI require gene insertion; they are useful in most cell lines, but not in xenograft models, and may affect the immunogenicity of the modified cells[9]. MRI does not require gene transfer and is useful for both cell lines and xenograft models[8,10,11,12]. For MRI, various sequences may be applied, these have not been compared for which best depicts orthotopic colon cancer. Whether MRI or BLI better depict orthotopic colon cancer needs clarification. We compared two of the most widely used imaging modalities, MRI and BLI, for monitoring tumor progression in an orthotopic mouse model of colon cancer
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