title: Murine liver implantation of radiation-induced fibrosarcoma: characterization with MR imaging, microangiography and histopathology.
abstract: We sought to establish and characterize a mouse liver tumor model as a platform for preclinical assessment of new diagnostics and therapeutics. Radiation-induced fibrosarcoma (RIF-1) was intrahepatically implanted in 27 C3H/Km mice. Serial in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with a clinical 1.5-T-magnet was performed using T1- (T1WI), T2- (T2WI), and diffusion-weighted sequences (DWI), dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI), and contrast-enhanced T1WI, and validated with postmortem microangiography and histopathology. Implantation procedure succeeded in 25 mice with 2 deaths from overdosed anesthesia or hypothermia. RIF-1 grew in 21 mice with volume doubling time of 2.55+/-0.88 days and final size of 216.2+/-150.4 mm(3) at day 14. Three mice were found without tumor growth and one only with abdominal seeding. The intrahepatic RIF-1 was hypervascularized with negligible necrosis as shown on MRI, microangiography and histology. On DCE-MRI, maximal initial slope of contrast-time curve and volume transfer constant per unit volume of tissue, K, differed between the tumor and liver with only the former significantly lower in the tumor than in the liver (P<0.05). Liver implantation of RIF-1 in mice proves a feasible and reproducible model and appears promising for use to screen new diagnostics and therapeutics under noninvasive monitoring even with a clinical MRI system.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, University Hospitals, Catholic University of Leuven, Herestraat 49, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Huaijun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Van de Putte
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Frederik
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: De Keyzer
authors.forename: Lixin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Guy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Marchal
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: de Witte
authors.forename: Yicheng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ni
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003287:Contrast Media; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D019786:Gadolinium DTPA; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D009368:Neoplasm Transplantation; D009381:Neoplasms, Radiation-Induced / Q000473:pathology*
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media; C064925:gadodiamide; D019786:Gadolinium DTPA