During the metastatic process tumor cells circulate in the blood stream and are carried to various organs. In order to spread to different organs tumor cell—endothelial cell interactions are crucial for extravasation mechanisms. It remains unclear if tumor cell dissemination to the spinal bone occurs by passive entrapment of circulating tumor cells or by active cellular mechanisms mediated by cell surface molecules or secreted factors. We investigated the seeding of three different tumor cell lines (melanoma, lung and prostate carcinoma) to the microvasculature of different organs. Their dissemination was compared to biologically passive microbeads. The spine and other organs were resected three hours after intraarterial injection of tumor cells or microbeads. Ex vivo homogenization and fluorescence analysis allowed quantification of tumor cells or microbeads in different organs. Interestingly, tumor cell distribution to the spinal bone was comparable to dissemination of microbeads independent of the tumor cell type (melanoma: 5.646% ± 7.614%, lung: 6.007% ± 1.785%, prostate: 3.469% ± 0.602%, 7 μm beads: 9.884% ± 7.379%, 16 μm beads: 7.23% ± 1.488%). Tumor cell seeding differed significantly between tumor cells and microbeads in all soft tissue organs. Moreover, there were significant differences between the different tumor cell lines in their dissemination behaviour to soft tissue organs only. These findings demonstrate that metastatic dissemination of tumor cells to spinal bone and other osseous organs is mediated by passive entrapment of tumor cells similar to passive plugging of microvasculature observed after intraarterial microbeads injection.
