TCDM provides extensive experience in generating both subcutaneous and orthotropic grafting of tumor cells into immunodeficient mice and rats. We also have experience in intraductal cancer cell injections and metastatic models including intravenous and intracardiac xenograft models. TCDM offers full service or technical support and collaboration in all phases of the project. This includes planning of the study, cell culture, cell inoculation, following the tumor burden by palpation, biomarker analyses OR imaging, randomization of the animals, drug treatment trials and reporting including statistical analyses of the results.
- Subcutaneous models: Subcutaneous inoculation of cancer cells in mice is a standard technique to generate tumor models. The major benefit of subcutaneous tumors is that the tumor growth can be easily followed by palpation.
- Orthotopic models: Among various orthotropic xenograft models, we have experience in orthotopic inoculation of tumors into mammary gland, prostate, pancreas, abdomen, bladder and under the ovarian bursa.
The take-rate of the tumors and their growth rate largely depend on the properties of the cells, and thus, a pilot study and power calculations are often required prior to a full study that should have sufficient number of tumor bearing animals. From our experience, majority of the xenograft studies lack a proper power due to too low number of tumor bearing animals used. We have long-term experience on hormone responsive and nonresponsive prostate and breast cancer xenograft models such as PC-3, VCaP, MCF-7, T47D and MDA-MB-231. For example, the model for castration resistant prostate cancer utilizing the VCaP cells is well validated, including antiandrogen treatments with known superantagonists (Knuuttila et al., 2014 Am J Pathol; Knuuttila et al., 2018 Am J Pathol.; Huhtaniemi et al., 2018 Am J Pathol.).