The hepatic sinusoidal endothelial lining and colorectal liver metastases

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common malignant disease and the severe nature of cases in men and women who develop colorectal cancer makes this an important socio-economic health issue. Major challenges such as understanding and modeling colorectal cancer pathways rely on our understanding of simple models such as outlined in this paper. We discuss that the development of novel standardized approaches of multidimensional (correlative) biomolecular microscopy methods facilitates the collection of (sub) cellular tissue information in the early onset of colorectal liver metastasis and that this approach will be crucial in designing new effective strategies for CRC treatment. The application of X-ray micro-computed tomography and its potential in correlative imaging of the liver vasculature will be discussed. (C) 2007 The WJG Press. All rights reserved.