Measuring apoptosis in mammals in vivo

Apoptosis is a mode of cell death that is essential in multicellular organisms for the removal of superfluous, damaged, or potentially dangerous cells during development, infection, or normal tissue homeostasis. To prevent inflammation, cells undergoing apoptosis produce “find-me” signals that trigger the recruitment of phagocytes, which clear the apoptotic cells on recognition of “eat-me” signals. Despite the loss of billions of cells per day by apoptosis in the human body, the number of apoptotic cells found in healthy tissue is surprisingly low and reflects the efficiency of this process. However, in certain conditions (e.g., in cancer cells responding to chemotherapy), the number of apoptotic cells is too high to be efficiently cleared by phagocytes, and apoptotic cells can be observed. In these situations, the detection of apoptosis may be helpful in monitoring disease progression as well as in predicting the responses of tumors to anticancer therapies. Here we introduce various methods for monitoring apoptotic cells in vivo using a murine model of B-cell lymphoma and a solid tumor xenograft.