Abstract:

This project addresses the theme of “impact of oil spills on public health”. Specifically, it address the general hypothesis, which is “upon oil/dispersant respiratory exposure there will be a higher carcinogenic potential of lung tissue”. To test this hypothesis, we attempted to determine if respiratory exposure to oil/dispersants accelerates tumorigenesis in lung tumor-bearing mice. For this, we took advantage of a lung tumor-bearing mouse model, the heterozygous K-Ras mice that normally develop lung tumors by 8-10 weeks of age. The mice were exposed through the oropharyngeal aspiration to the five exposure conditions (i.e., oil, dispersant 9500, dispersant 9527, oil+9500, oil+9527) plus the control condition (saline solution) for 3 weeks. Each group contains 3 or 4 male and 3 or 4 female mice so we have a total of 42 mice in the dataset. The mice were monitored for weight, and the mean weight in each treatment group was compared with the control group from the beginning of exposure until euthanasia. After euthanasia, histopathological characterization was performed for the mouse lung for measurements of tumor lesion area, total lung area and lung tumor burden. These measurements were compared between a treatment group and the control group. In addition, total lung slide image (.jpg) for each mouse were also collected.

Suggested Citation:

Morris, Gilbert. 2019. Characteristics data for lung tumor-bearing mice. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/n7-ndz4-ws96

Publications:

Liu, Y.-Z., Miller, C. A., Zhuang, Y., Mukhopadhyay, S. S., Saito, S., Overton, E. B., & Morris, G. F. (2020). The Impact of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill upon Lung Health—Mouse Model-Based RNA-Seq Analyses. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(15), 5466. doi:10.3390/ijerph17155466

Purpose:

To determine if respiratory exposure to oil/dispersants accelerates tumorigenesis in lung tumor-bearing mice.

Data Parameters and Units:

The dataset consists of an excel file containing the mouse characteristics data and several images of lung slides. The images have unique ID numbers corresponding to the mice subject numbers. The excel file contains 4 worksheets. In the first three sheets, each row of the matrix corresponds to a mouse subject and each column a characteristic, such as treatment group, gender, weight measurements during the exposure, and histopathological features (e.g., plural surface tumor count, tumor lesion area, total lung area and lung tumor burden). Specifically, sheet 1 is the weight information, sheet 2 is plural surface tumor count, sheet 3 is tumor burden information, and sheet 4 is a description of treatment protocols and measurements. Parameters: Mouse ID, Gender, Treatment (saline, oil, Corexit9500, 9500+oil, Corexit9527, 9527+oil), Weight(g)_baseline, Weight(g)_day_7, Weight(g)_day_14, Weight(g)_day_21, Count_from_Examiner_1, Count_from_Examiner_2, Count_from_Examiner_3, Lesion-area (µm2), Total_lung_area (µm2), Tumor burden, Experiment, Sex, Age, Solution, ratio, and Volume. Note: HBSS = Hank's balanced salt solution; Oil = Deepwater Horizon crude oil

Methods:

Solutions were prepared at the indicated ratio and stirred for 18 hours. The mixture was allowed to separate overnight. The 50µl of the aqueous phase was delivered to mice by oropharyngeal aspiration. Each treatment group has 3 or 4 lung tumor-bearing K-RasLA1 mice/per gender. Mice were treated with the indicated solution on day 0, 7 & 14, and euthanasia on day 21. Fixed lung tissue evaluated for tumor nodules on the pleural surface before paraffin embedding. Lung tissue sections were cut at 5µm and stained with hematoxylin and eosin. Whole slide images were captured with an Aperio slide scanner. Area of tumor lesions and lung area were determined for each slide. Tumor burden equals the area of tumor lesions divided by the total area of the lung.

Individual Files: