Analysis of the Potential for Pancreatic Cancer Metastasis In Vitro and In Vivo

Pancreatic cancer remains a challenging disease, with an overall 5-year survival rate below 5%, the main reason being that it has an extremely high potential for invasion and metastasis. This potential may contribute to the fact that in more than three fourths of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, it has already spread locally and to distant organs, precluding curative resection. Therefore, improved understanding of the mechanisms underlying pancreatic cancer metastasis is urgently needed. In this chapter, we describe our approaches to determining the metastatic potential of pancreatic cancer cells. Specifically, we report the details of these approaches, including in vitro assays of migration, invasion, adhesion, and angiogenesis and in vivo models of liver and lung metastasis and angiogenesis.