Mouse Models of Lung Metastasis

All animal care and experimental procedures were approved by the Vanderbilt University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Sex-, weight-, and age-matched 8- to 10-wk-old wild type C57BL/6 mice, IL-5-deficient mice (C57BL/6-Il5^tm1Kopf/J, hereafter called IL-5KO) mice (9 (link)), c-kit mutant mice (B6.Cg-Kit^W-sh/HNihrJaeBsmGlliJ, hereafter called c-kit^W-sh) (14 (link)) were used. For intravenous (IV) metastasis models, Lewis lung adenocarcinoma (LLC, 1.5×10⁵), B16-F10 mouse melanoma (2.5×10⁵) (American Type Culture Collection) or MC38 colon adenocarcinoma (0.5×10⁵) cells (from Dr. D. Lee Gorden, Vanderbilt University) were injected into the tail vein (15 (link)). Mice were euthanized at Day 14 after injection of tumor cells. For flank tumor generation, LLC cells (2.5×10⁵) were injected subcutaneously (SQ) and the primary tumor as well as lung metastases were assessed 28 days later. At the time of harvest, lungs were fixed in Bouin’s fixative solution (Sigma-Aldrich) for 24 hours and surface tumors were counted as previously described (16 (link)). Tumor diameters were determined using digital calipers (Fisher Scientific).