Balb c slc

All animal experimental procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of JAIST and AIST. Female BALB/cSlc (4 weeks old; average weight, 16 g) and BALB/cSlc-nu/nu mice (4 weeks old; average weight, 18 g) were purchased from Japan SLC (Hamamatsu, Japan) and were housed in specific pathogen-free facilities with a 12-h light/12-h dark cycle and free access to food and water.
To generate tumour models, nude mice were subcutaneously inoculated in the flanks with equivalent number of cells (5 × 10⁵ cells for HT-29; 1 × 10⁶ cells for A549 and Colon-26) suspended in 100-μl aliquots of culture medium/Matrigel (Corning) mixture (v:v = 1:1). For in vivo tumour phototherapy experiments, mice were bilaterally implanted with either control or TRPV2 overexpressing derivative cells into flanks. For in vivo biodistribution analyses, both cell types were injected into opposite flanks of the same mouse. For in vivo drug and phototherapy combination experiments, only TRPV2-transfected A549 cells were injected into the right flank of mice. Tumour sizes were monitored using vernier calipers and tumour volumes were calculated as V = L × W²/2, where L and W denote lengths and widths of tumours, respectively. Tumour models were randomly divided and used in experiments when tumour volumes reached about 100 mm³.