Week 3 –Joyce
After the warm-up of minimally invasive surgery, I watched the traditional incision surgery of colorectal cancer patient. As the tumor searching procedure was imaged in the monitor, I got the clearer idea of the organ shapes and locations than the MINT surgery. I was leaded to discover the tumor locations as the electrocauterization cut through the surrounding matrix and fat tissues, which made me excited and nervous. I am also curious how well the wound made by cautery heal because the electrocauterization cut through soft tissues by burning which should cause epithelium burning and protein denatured. Does the electrocauterization lead to further autoimmune reaction? After watched the clinical colorectal surgeries, I became more passionate about the basic research which will generate better therapy against cancer diseases.
Research project goes well, especially in primary culture of colorectal cancer samples. Among those clinical cancer tissues subcutaneously implanted in SCID mice, two not only grew out subcutaneous xenografts, but aggressively generated metastasis to internal organs like liver, spleen, and thymus. Interestingly, one line even disseminated along the gastrointestine track and abdomen. We are so excited about the discovery since no colorectal cancer lines have been reported to metastasize from subcutaneous tumors to internal fetal organs before. While we have to approve the internal organ metastasis originate from the patient tumors, not the spontaneously developed by SCID mice before drawing any conclusion. To test the human origin, I am going to amplify two special human centrisome loci using the DNA exacted from metastasis tissues by PCR. Additionally, I will try to tag the primary lines by GFP-lentivirus infection and then inoculate the cells to mice and detect the human cancer tissues by GFP signals. Also I should repeat the metastasis phenomena in more mice to prove the metastasis capability is solid for further studies.