Tumor Cells Travel Through a Fish 1

Tumor Cells Travel Through a Fish 1

David Benjamin

MIT Department of Biology, Koch Institute at MIT

Zebrafish embryos offer a unique system in which to image the events of metastasis. In my experiments, I inject fluorescently-labeled tumor cells into 2 day old zebrafish and then image for periods of hours up to 4 days post-injection. I can watch tumor cells in real time as they travel through circulation, arrest at metastatic sites, exit blood vessels, and form new tumors. The image shows a single 6-day-old fish fish with green tumor cells growing throughout the body 4 days post-injection.

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