TRIzol and Alu qPCR-based quantification of metastatic seeding within the skeleton.

Current methods for detecting disseminated tumor cells in the skeleton are limited by expense and technical complexity. We describe a simple and inexpensive method to quantify, with single cell sensitivity, human metastatic cancer in the mouse skeleton, concurrently with host gene expression, using TRIzol-based DNA/RNA extraction and Alu sequence qPCR amplification. This approach enables precise quantification of tumor cells and corresponding host gene expression during metastatic colonization in xenograft models.