Fig. 4. Blood exchange as a method for direct CTC injection for metastasis studies.
a Schematic demonstrating the serial blood exchange experimental setup in which a single TBM was connected to two healthy counterparts, each for 2 h. b Bioluminescent In Vivo Imaging System (IVIS) images demonstrating the tumor burden of the donor (TBM) before the blood exchange and the recipient mice (HMs) when liver metastases were detected two months after blood exchange. c Representative H&E-stained liver sections from a blood-exchange recipient mouse (SR6458-HM) and from a tumor bearing mouse (scale bars = 2 mm). Bottom row represents 20× zoomed-in images of the white outlined regions in the top row images (scale bars = 200 µm). These findings were reproduced four times in separate biological replicates. PRPten: Ptenflox/flox;Rb1flox/flox;Trp53flox/flox.