The local control of regional metastatic cancer is currently a significant and important component of cancer therapy for certain tumors. Minimally invasive treatment modalities and new anti-cancer agents such as antiangiogenesis agents and gene therapy agents have gained increasing interest. Development of new therapeutic approaches requires animal models that adequately reproduce certain diseases, e.g. liver metastases.
The specific aim of this project is to develop a stable animal model for the study of hypervascular liver metastases. Therefore VX2 tumor chunks will be inserted into the portal venous system of rabbits to mimic hematogeneous tumor spread. In a second step the induced liver metastases will be characterized by CT and MR imaging techniques. Perfusion imaging of the lesions and the surrounding liver parenchyma will be performed by CT and MRI and perfusion related parameters such as blood flow, blood volume and capillary permeability will be calculated based on compartment models.
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