London Health Sciences Centre 2 articles published in JoVE Medicine Generation of Organ-conditioned Media and Applications for Studying Organ-specific Influences on Breast Cancer Metastatic Behavior Matthew M. Piaseczny*1,2, Graciella M. Pio*1,2, Jenny E. Chu1,2, Ying Xia1, Kim Nguyen1,3, David Goodale1, Alison Allan1,2,4,5 1London Regional Cancer Program, London Health Sciences Centre, 2Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, 3Department of Biochemistry, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, 4Department of Oncology, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, 5Lawson Health Research Institute This manuscript describes an ex vivo model system comprised of organ-conditioned media derived from the lymph node, bone, lung, and brain of mice. This model system can be used to identify and study organ-derived soluble factors and their effects on the organ tropism and metastatic behavior of cancer cells. Medicine Adaptation of Semiautomated Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) Assays for Clinical and Preclinical Research Applications Lori E. Lowes1,2, Benjamin D. Hedley3, Michael Keeney3,4, Alison L. Allan1,2,4,5 1London Regional Cancer Program, London Health Sciences Centre, 2Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, 3Special Hematology/Flow Cytometry, London Health Sciences Centre, 4Lawson Health Research Institute, 5Department of Oncology, Western University Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are prognostic in several metastatic cancers. This manuscript describes the gold standard CellSearch system (CSS) CTC enumeration platform and highlights common misclassification errors. In addition, two adapted protocols are described for user-defined marker characterization of CTCs and CTC enumeration in preclinical mouse models of metastasis using this technology.
