Novel human melanoma brain metastasis models in athymic nude fox1nu mice: Site-specific metastasis patterns reflecting their clinical origin.

The present work demonstrates that human brain-metastatic melanoma cells injected intracardially in mice had retained inherent characteristics also in reproducing interaction with subtle microenvironmental brain tissue compartment-specific features. The models offer new possibilities for investigating tumor- and host-associated factors involved in determining tissue specificity of brain metastasis.