Abstract: Objective To establish orthotopic transplant models of human lung cancer and study the in vivo biological characteristics of human lung cancer with high and low metastatic potential cells in nude mice. Methods The low-metastatic human lung cancer cell line SPC-A-1 and high-metastatic human lung cancer cell line SPC-A-1sci were tranfected with green fluorescent protein/Luciferase (GFP/Luc) gene by lentiviral vector, they were orthotopically transplanted into the lung of nude mice. The tumor growth and metastasis were observed by using in vivo biofluorescent imaging system and anatomical methods. Results The human lung cancer cell lines with stable high-level GFP/Luc expression and orthotopic transplant animal models were successfully established. In vivo biofluorescent images showed that the luciferase expression rates of SPC-A-1-GFP-Luc and SPC-A-1sci-GFP-Luc cells were 50.0% (12/24) and 62.5% (20/32), respectively. The expression intensity and area of luciferase expression in SPC-A-1sci-GFP-Luc cells were higher than that in SPC-A-1-GFP-Luc cells. Anatomical examination showed that tumor formation rates of SPC-A-1 cells and SPC-A-1sci cells were 50.0% (12/24) and 62.5% (20/32), respectively. Meanwhile, the spontaneous metastasis rate was 25.0% (3/12) and 40.0% (8/20) in vivo. Conclusions Lung orthotopic transplant animal model could reproduce the biological characteristics of tumor growth and metastasis. In vivo biofluorescent imaging system was suitable for the objective evaluation of the biological characteristics.

Key words: Human lung cancer, Orthotopic transplantation, In vivo imaging system, Lentiviral vector