Establishment and Validation of an Orthotopic Metastatic Mouse Model of Colorectal Cancer

Metastases are largely responsible for cancer deaths in solid tumors due to the lack of effective therapies against disseminated disease, and there is an urgent need to fill this gap. This study demonstrates an orthotopic colorectal cancer (CRC) mouse model system to develop spontaneous metastasis in vivo and compare its reproducibility against human CRC. IGF1R-dependent GEO human CRC cells were used to study metastatic colonization using orthotopic transplantation procedures and demonstrated robust liver metastasis. Cell proliferation assays were performed both in the orthotopic primary colon and liver metastatic tumors, and human CRC patient's specimen and similar patterns in H&E and Ki67 staining were observed between the orthotopically generated primary and liver metastatic tumors and human CRC specimens. Microarray analysis was performed to generate gene signatures, compared with deposited human CRC gene expression data sets, analyzed by Oncomine, and revealed similarity in gene signatures with increased aggressive markers expression associated with CRC in orthotopically generated liver metastasis. Thus, we have developed an orthotopic mouse model that reproduces human CRC metastasis. This model system can be effective in developing new therapeutic strategies against disseminated disease and could be implemented for identifying genes that regulate the development and/or maintenance of established metastasis.