Confocal Endomicroscopy Monitoring of Tumor Formation

The utilization of preclinical murine models of colorectal cancer (CRC) has been essential to our understanding of the onset and progression of disease. As the genetic complexity of these models evolves to better recapitulate emerging CRC subtypes, our ability to utilize these models to discover and validate novel therapeutic targets will also improve. This will be aided, in part, by the development of live animal imaging techniques, including confocal endomicroscopy for mice. Here in this chapter, we describe the combined use of standard white light endoscopy and confocal endomicroscopy thereby providing a method to rapidly image and assess changes in the colon of an individual live mouse in real time. These methods permit the generation of high-resolution cross-sectional images of the tumor microenvironment for immediate visualization of cells of interest, avoiding the need for euthanasia and tissue collection across multiple cohorts of mice.