Qualitative in vivo bioluminescence imaging

Devbarna Sinha; Zalitha Pieterse; Pritinder Kaur

doi:10.21769/BioProtoc.3020

Qualitative in vivo bioluminescence imaging

Bio Protoc. 2018 Sep 20;8(18):e3020. doi: 10.21769/BioProtoc.3020.

Authors

Devbarna Sinha¹, Zalitha Pieterse², Pritinder Kaur^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Epithelial Stem Cell Biology Laboratory, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
² School of Pharmacy & Biomedical Sciences, Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Australia.

Abstract

Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) technology is an advanced method of carrying out molecular imaging on live laboratory animals in vivo. This powerful technique is widely-used in studying a variety of biological processes, and it has been an ideal tool in exploring tumor growth and metastatic spread in real-time. This technique ensures the optimal use of laboratory animal resources, particularly the ethical principle of reduction in animal use, given its non-invasive nature, ensuring that ongoing biological processes can be studied over time in the same animal, without the need to euthanize groups of mice at specific time points. In this protocol, the luciferase imaging technique was developed to study the effect of co-inoculating pericytes (contractile, αSMA⁺ mesenchymal stem cell-like cells, located abluminally in microvessels) on the growth and metastatic spread of ovarian cancers using an aggressive ovarian cancer cell line-OVCAR-5-as an example.

Keywords: Bioluminescence; Luciferase Imaging; Metastasis; Ovarian cancer; Tumor imaging.