Tiny Window in Living Mice Shows Cancer Spread in Real-Time A
mouse with a window surgically implanted in its belly. Though
the tiny window, scientists could watch cancer cells grow and
spread in real-time. CREDIT: Laila Ritsma and Dr. Jacco van
Rheenen. To literally watch cancer spread, researchers have
surgically implanted small glass windows into the bellies of
living mice. The insights such windows could yield on cancer
might help better battle it, scientists added. In the last
decade, researchers have developed tiny glass windows they could
implant on the skin and mammary glands of living mice. These
have enabled scientists to use microscopes to watch how breast
cancer and tumors under the skin develop in real-time. However,
until now, investigators lacked windows that could help them
peer at the liver, spleen, lungs, bone marrow and lymph nodes,
the internal organs and tissues most prone to metastasis, the
process by which cancers spread from one area to distant sites
elsewhere in the body. Most cancer-