In Vivo Imaging of Subcutaneous Xenografts

All animal experiments were carried out at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) according to the guidelines of German Regulations for Animal Welfare and have been approved by the Landesdirektion Dresden (24-9165.40-4, 24.9168.21-4/2004-1). Four weeks old female NMRI-Foxn1^nu/Foxn1^nu mice were purchased from JANVIER LABS (St. Berthevin, France). General anesthesia was induced with 10% (v/v) and maintained with inhalation of 8% (v/v) desflurane (Suprane, Baxter, Germany) in 30/10% (v/v) oxygen/air. Luminescence imaging of the subcutaneous injected cells (exposure times 1 s, 10 s, and 60 s) was performed using a dedicated small animal multimodal imaging system (In-Vivo-Xtreme, Bruker, Germany) 10 min after i.p. injection of 200 µl of D-luciferin (15 mg/ml) (ThermoFisher Scientific). In parallel, an X-ray photograph was taken from the same animals at the same position [39 (link)–41 (link)].