Establishment and evaluation of the VX2 orthotopic lung cancer rabbit model: a ultra-minimal invasive percutaneous puncture inoculation method

The purpose of the present work is to establish an ultra-minimal invasive percutaneous puncture inoculation method for a VX2 orthotopic lung cancer rabbit model with fewer technical difficulties, lower mortality of rabbits, a higher success rate and a shorter operation time, to evaluate the growth, metastasis and apoptosis of tumor by CT scans, necropsy, histological examination, flow cytometry and immunohistochemistry. The average inoculation time was 10–15 min per rabbit. The tumor-bearing rate was 100%. More than 90% of the tumor-bearing rabbits showed local solitary tumor with 2–10 mm diameters after two weeks post-inoculation, and the rate of chest seeding was only 8.3% (2/24). The tumors diameters increased to 4–16 mm, and irregularly short thorns were observed 3 weeks after inoculation. Five weeks post-inoculation, the liquefaction necrosis and a cavity developed, and the size of tumor grew further. Before natural death, the CT images showed that the tumors spread to the chest. The flow cytometry and immunohistochemistry indicated that there was less apoptosis in VX2 orthotopic lung cancer rabbit model compared to chemotherapy drug treatment group. Minimal invasive percutaneous puncture inoculation is an easy, fast and accurate method to establish the VX2 orthotopic lung cancer rabbit model, an ideal in situ tumor model similar to human malignant tumor growth.