Metastasis Model to Test the Role of Notch Signaling in Prostate Cancer.

Distant metastasis is the main cause of death in prostate cancer patients. Notch signaling plays an important role in driving prostate cancer aggressiveness and metastasis. In this chapter, we describe a protocol to measure prostate cancer metastatic colonization, incidences of metastasis, accurately quantify the burden of metastasis, and test the role of NOTCH1 receptor on prostate cancer metastatic colonization and homing to distant sites. The metastasis model presented here is established by intracardiac injection of control human prostate cancer cells and NOTCH1 downregulated cells. The cells are engineered to express both red fluorescent protein (RFP) and luciferase. In this model, whole body bioluminescence imaging, high-resolution, and quantitative fluorescence imaging are utilized for quantitative assessment of metastatic colonization and metastasis burden. Further, histopathology analyses of diverse metastatic organs are performed. This model is a powerful and versatile tool to investigate the mechanisms underlying the function of NOTCH receptors in metastatic colonization in prostate cancer.