Description
Vascular endothelial growth factor is a multifunctional cytokine playing important roles in angiogenesis, tumor progression and metastasis. Alternative splicing results in the production of several different isoforms of VEGF. We have previously generated human breast cancer cells overexpressing VEGF165 or VEGF189 isoforms (referred to as the V165 and V189 clones, respectively) and showed that VEGF189-transfected cells were less tumorigenic. In this study, we used bioluminescence imaging to analyze the metastasis capacity of breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-321) overexpressing VEGF isoforms in nude mice. V165, V189 and control cV clones were transfected with a luciferase plasmid to generate bioluminescent clones (the V165-B, V189-B and cV clones, respectively). These clones were then injected into the left heart ventricle of nude mice.