Establishment of a colorectal cancer nude mouse visualization model of HIF-1 overexpression

The aim of the present study was to establish a model of tumor cell growth and visualize HIF-1 overexpression in a nude mouse xenograft model of colorectal cancer (CRC). In the study, HIF-1 lentiviral vector and helper plasmid were co-transfected into 293T packaging cells using a liposome method, and the virus was collected following transfection and used to infect CRC SW480, SW620, LoVo and HCT116 cells. Puromycin was used for the selection and large-scale amplification of the stable HIF-1 expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-positive cells. HIF-1-expressing cells were injected intraperitoneally into a nude mouse xenograft model, and resulting tumor nodules was separated and confirmed using an inverted fluorescence microscope. The results demonstrated that HIF-1 was not expressed in CRC cells in normoxic conditions. When treated with CoCl2, the expression of HIF-1 could be induced in all the cancer cell lines, except SW480. HIF-1 was highly expressed following infection with lentiviral particles. Stable expression of HIF-1 promoted migration in the SW480 cells. Following intraperitoneal injection of nude mice with SW480-HIF-1, a significant number of tumor nodules formed in the intestinal wall compared with the controls (P<0.05). The successful construction of the dual expression HIF-1 and GFP visualization xenograft model provides a good foundation for the screening of HIF-1-related functions and for investigating the therapeutic potential of drugs that target HIF-1.