Cytometrically monitored neoplastic progression in the Nb bladder cancer model: selective proliferation of variant subpopulations

Abstract

The identification and understanding of neoplasm heterogeneity is essential to allow for more individually oriented treatment modalities. There is a tendency to limit the analysis of neoplasm heterogeneity to diagnostic classification only; however, recently refined methods of rapid subpopulation analysis should expand this restricted usage to monitoring of chemotherapeutic treatment. The documentation of the neoplastic progression of the Nb rat bladder cancer model as a function of variant subpopulation proliferation and selection is reported herein. This documentation represents the efforts of this laboratory to develop a flow cytometrically monitored animal bladder tumor model to evaluate the in vivo effects of chemotherapies on neoplastic subpopulations; particularly those subpopulations potentially metastatic or resistant to therapy. It is anticipated that this will increase our understanding of this model, and more specifically, tumor biology. This particular tumor initially occurred in an aged Noble male breeder rat.