Visualizing the Cell-Matrix Interactions and Cytoskeleton of Disseminated Tumor Cells

Tumor cells often leave the primary tumor mass and get settled in a foreign tissue years before the development of overt metastases, exhibiting the highly inefficient nature of metastatic colony formation. In fact, the tumor cells that disseminate into distant organs and subsequently invade the parenchyma of these organs rarely proceed to found actively growing metastatic colonies. Instead, the majority of these tumor cells undergo prolonged proliferative arrest unless they are swiftly eliminated by the immune system. Together, these observations indicate that the proliferative capacity of the disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) serves as a key determinant of the efficiency of metastasis, highlighting the need to better understand the mechanism governing the proliferation of these cells. Recent studies are unveiling the importance of the interactions between DTCs and the microenvironment of the host tissue in regulating the proliferation of DTCs. However, the details of such interactions remain to be fully delineated. Here I describe the methods for visualizing and analyzing the interactions between DTCs and the extracellular matrix (ECM) components of the host tissue as well as the cytoskeleton of the DTCs that support these interactions. The methods described here will facilitate the study of how DTCs interact with the ECM of their host tissue, which will be crucial for elucidating the mechanism that underlies the regulation of DTC proliferation by the DTC-ECM interactions.