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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Dec 13.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Biomed Eng. 2017 Jun 13;1:0077. doi: 10.1038/s41551-017-0077

Table 1.

Strategies for characterizing the pre-metastatic niche and metastasis formation

Strategy Advantages Disadvantages
Biomaterial pre-metastatic niche mimic
  • Limits off-target effects

  • Defined location for analysis

  • Biomaterial properties can be manipulated for different applications

  • Ease of evaluating multiple niche cues in one device

  • Large number of cells can be retrieved from the device

  • Does not recapitulate all elements of native pre-metastatic niche

  • Foreign body response may influence the biomaterial environment and differ from a natural pre-metastatic niche

High risk tissue bed biopsy
  • Enables determination of cues leading to organ-specific metastasis

  • Captures heterogeneity between metastatic foci

  • Variability between samples may confound discovery of critical signals

  • Identification pre-metastatic sites is limited

Tumour cell modification
  • Direct evidence for molecular drivers of metastasis

  • User-defined alterations

  • Potential for off target effects on tumour progression

  • Generating a reliable cell/mouse model is challenging

Genetically engineered mouse models (GEMM)
  • Direct evidence for role of a factor or cell type in metastasis

  • Ability to knock-out and knock-in specific genes

  • Costly and time-intensive

  • Potential for off-target effects on health of the animal or tumour progression