The Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is an academic center affiliated with the Division of Toxicological Sciences in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

 

Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

Research Grants 1993-1994

Standardization and Simplification of an In Vitro Assay to Screen the Efficacy of Anti-Metastatic Agents

Margaret Penno, PhD
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland

Tumor metastasis is difficult to study in both humans and animals. Earlier studies have demonstrated that tumor cell invasion is potentiated by proteins involved in adhesion, selective proteolysis and cellular movement across subendothelial basement membranes. Human venule endothelial cells will be used by the investigator to create a screening assay to measure the invasive capacity of tumor cells and the effects of potential anti-metastatic agents. Invasion assays will test the ability of human monocytes and lung carcinomas to cross a 100 µg barrier of Matrigel in a two-chamber well. A non-invasive line of normal fibroblasts will serve as a control.

Specific goals are to determine the reproducibility and quality of the simplified chamber assay, to determine the former with the addition of endothelial cells and to determine the utility of the chamber assay to study the effect of selected antibodies to act as anti-metastatic agents.