Fig. 2: Intracardiac implantation to determine where metabolite auxotrophs can grow as metastases.
From: Nutrient requirements of organ-specific metastasis in breast cancer
a, Schematic of intracardiac injection of control and auxotroph cells expressing Fluc into the left ventricle, enabling metastatic spread to the brain, liver, lung, ovary, bone, and kidney or adrenal glands. Colonization was quantified by bioluminescence imaging of harvested tissues at end point. MDA-MB-231–Fluc and HCC1806–Fluc cells were injected into NSG mice; EO771–Fluc cells were injected into B6 mice. Created in BioRender. Abbott, K. (2025) https://BioRender.com/73th1x3. b, Petal plots used to display metastatic patterns, where each petal represents a tissue and its length indicates growth of auxotrophs relative to controls. c, Petal plots showing the metastatic distributions of different metabolite auxotroph cells relative to control cells. Data are mean ± 95% confidence interval; n = 3–7 biologically independent mice per group, with exact numbers reported in the Source Data. Plots were derived from Extended Data Fig. 8. Bo, bone; Br, brain; Ki, kidney; Li, liver; Lu, lung; Ov, ovary. d, Scatter plots of average metabolite concentrations in tissue IF versus auxotroph dependency (log2 fold depletion in tumour growth of knockout relative to control). MDA-MB-231 (black) and HCC1806 (blue) were compared with NSG tissue metabolite levels; EO771 (red) was compared with B6 levels. Brain values reflect CSF. Data are mean ± s.e.m.; n = 3–7 biologically independent mice per group with exact numbers reported in the Source Data. Pearson correlation coefficients (r) and exact P values are provided in the Source Data (two-sided tests; *P < 0.05 and **P < 0.01). PYCR denotes PYCR1/2/3 triple knockout. Experiments were performed once.
