Quantitative bioluminescence imaging of mouse tumor models

Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) has become an essential technique for preclinical evaluation of anticancer therapeutics and provides sensitive and quantitative measurements of tumor burden in experimental cancer models. For light generation, a vector encoding firefly luciferase is introduced into human cancer cells that are grown as tumor xenografts in immunocompromised hosts, and the enzyme substrate luciferin is injected into the host. Alternatively, the reporter gene can be expressed in genetically engineered mouse models to determine the onset and progression of disease. In addition to expression of an ectopic luciferase enzyme, bioluminescence requires oxygen and ATP, thus only viable luciferase-expressing cells or tissues are capable of producing bioluminescence signals. Here, we summarize a BLI protocol that takes advantage of advances in hardware, especially the cooled charge-coupled device camera, to enable detection of bioluminescence in living animals with high sensitivity and a large dynamic range.