Abstract
Cancer is one of the most common causes of death in modern society, and metastasis contributes its high mortality. Some types of cancer metastasize to the lymph node, and trigger to the distant metastasis, resulting in poor prognosis. Immigration of tumor cells to the distant organs via lymph node has not been poorly understood and metastasis route in lymphatic vessel has been considered to be different from blood circulation. Our recent study showed that distant metastasis is caused by invasion into vein on the surface of a lymph node after metastasis into the lymph node in a lymph node metastasis mouse model, MXH10/Mo-lpr/lpr (MXH10/Mo/lpr) mouse and suggested that the "lymph node mediated hematogenous metastasis" should be recognized as the final of lymph node metastasis. However, the circulation system around the lymph node that was observed in MXH10/Mo/lpr mice is not be proved in conventional mice. Here we show the similarity of blood vessel network around the subiliac lymph node (SiLN) in MXH10/Mo/lpr mouse C57BL/6 mouse, BALB/cAJcl mouse and NOD/ShiJic-SCID mice. We found that the surficial vein on SiLN is connected to inferior vena cava, and this connection contributes lymph node mediated hematogenous metastasis. We anticipated our investigation to be a start point for advanced research of lymph node mediated hematogenous metastasis.
