Tracking Neutrophils in the Early Metastatic Niches Using Ex Vivo Live Imaging (infocus #81 March 2026)

Metastasis is the leading cause of cancer mortality. Neutrophils, a type of immune cell, play important roles in cancer with both potent anti- and pro-tumour activities.

DOI: 10.22443/rms.inf.1.311

They are produced in both the bone marrow and the spleen, and recent research has established that their phenotype was much more heterogenous than we previously thought.

Our lab has also shown that the spleen may serve as an important extramedullary production site in cancer, capable of producing neutrophils distinct from those that originated in the bone marrow.

My summer project explored this by studying how neutrophils from the bone marrow and spleen behave and interact with tumour cells in the lung at early stages of metastasis. Using confocal microscopy ex vivo live imaging, I tracked neutrophil movements in lung tissue from a mouse model of metastasizing pancreatic cancer.

I found that neutrophils from both sources clustered near tumour cells, but spleenderived neutrophils may have higher arrest times and moved slower when near tumour cells, suggesting a potential role in early metastasis.

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