Journal Article

Sensitive monitoring of xenograft cancer models using cell-free DNA

Zhu, Wenjing, Tang, Bianbian, Peng, Qiyu, Lin, Huizhen, Bai, Yunxia, Gong, Fanglei, An, Yunyun, Sun, Kun

2025

Overview

Furthermore, biopsies taken after sacrifice did not reveal any tumors, indicating that HCC1937 cells did not form solid tumors. Besides imaging, a human-specific PCR primer set was designed, validated, and utilized in this study to evaluate ctDNA (Suppl. [See PDF for image] Fig. 1 Detection of ctDNA in xenograft mouse models. (a-g) NCG mice engrafted with HCC1937 cells (named m1 to m6, respectively). (a) Study design and experiment timepoints. (b) In vivo imaging results at various timepoints. (c) Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging results at week 12 post engraftment. [...]due to its high sensitivity, ctDNA has been effectively utilized for monitoring minimal residual disease and predicting early cancer relapses [4, 5]. [...]our study highlights the persistence of ctDNA in xenograft mice lacking recognizable tumors, underscoring the limitations of current in vivo imaging methods.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Animal models / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Biomedicine / Biopsy / Cancer therapies / Cell culture / Consent / DNA methylation / Letter to the Editor / Lung cancer / Medical research / Medicine/Public Health / Minimal residual disease / Patients / Plasma / Positron emission tomography / Solid tumors / Tomography / Translational Genomics and Genetics / Tumors / Whole genome sequencing / Xenografts