Establishment of Luciferase-Expressing Cancer Cell Lines

Luciferase-expressing cancer cell lines (human breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231-Luc, murine melanoma cancer cells B16-F10- Luc, and murine mammary cancer cells 4T1-Luc) were obtained from Caliper Life Sciences (Hopkinton, MA). Detailed construction of the lentiviral vector system, transfection, and characterization of stable cell lines were previously reported [22 (link), 23 ]. All three cell lines were cultured in RPMI 1640 medium (HyClone, UT) supplemented with 10% heat inactivated fetal bovine serum (HyClone, UT) without antibiotics and tested negative for human and rodent pathogens prior to initiation of the animal studies. A single cancer cell suspension was prepared for tumor induction in Hanks Balanced Salt Solution with greater than 95% viability as evaluated by trypan blue staining.