New Mouse Imaging Method Links Whole-Body Tumor Scans to Cell-Level Detail

What the researchers built

A team based at the University of Glasgow and the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute has built a new mouse model. It can be imaged three ways at once.

The paper ran in Nature Biotechnology in 2026. Co-authors work at King's College London, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Cambridge, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

The model is called Rosa26LSL-NRL. It carries three reporter genes. A reporter gene is a stretch of DNA that makes a cell produce something a machine can detect.

The problem it addresses

Cancer researchers need to answer two questions that are usually asked with different instruments.

Where are tumors in the body, and how are they changing? Whole-body scanning answers this. It covers everything but cannot resolve individual cells.

What are the cells doing? Microscopy answers this. It shows cells in detail but only in a small piece of tissue, with no sense of the wider picture.

The authors note a gap. Older reporter mice usually rely on one imaging method, over a narrow range of scale. So a researcher who spots something odd on a whole-body scan has had no sure way to go and study those exact cells.

How three reporters help

Each reporter is read by a different instrument:

• Fluorescence — cells glow under specific wavelengths of light, viewed with a microscope.
• Bioluminescence — cells produce their own light through a chemical reaction, sensitive enough to detect through tissue.
• PET — positron emission tomography, which detects a radioactive tracer and can scan an entire animal. Our PET scan page explains how the same method is used in people.

The model also uses a genetic switch called Cre-lox. It lets researchers choose which cells carry the reporters, and when those reporters switch on. That is what makes the labeling specific to one tissue at one time.

The team used this in mice with two cancers: hepatocellular carcinoma, a liver cancer, and lung adenocarcinoma. Bioluminescence and PET, paired with MRI, located lesions across the whole animal. The PET tracer was [18F]tetrafluoroborate. Microscopy then showed how cells behaved at those sites.

Why the scale-linking matters

Tumors are not all alike, even in one body. Separate lesions can grow at different speeds. They can sit in different surroundings, draw in immune cells in different ways, and answer the same treatment differently.

An average across all of them hides the very thing a researcher wants to see. Finding the odd lesion on a scan, then looking straight at its cells, turns a vague finding into a precise one.

What imaging does in actual patient care

None of the above is a patient test, but the underlying tools will be familiar.

NCI treats imaging as one part of how cancer is found. The others are a physical exam, lab tests, and biopsy. Scans can show where a suspicious area sits, how big it is, and whether disease shows up elsewhere.

What a scan usually cannot do is prove that something is cancer. That takes a biopsy, so a pathologist can look at the cells. The mouse work sidesteps this in the lab: reporters make cells visible without removing them. Our page on imaging tests covers what each scan shows.

When imaging is the right next step

Imaging is ordered because of a symptom or a finding, not on its own. Contact a clinician about:

• A lump anywhere that is new, firm, or growing, or that has lasted more than three weeks.
• Bleeding with no clear cause: when coughing, in stool or urine, between periods, or after menopause.
• A cough, hoarseness, or trouble swallowing lasting beyond three weeks.
• Persistent pain that does not settle as an injury would.
• Unexplained weight loss over 10% of your body weight in six months.
• A new headache pattern, weakness on one side, or a first seizure — these need urgent assessment.

If you are already under follow-up after cancer treatment, report a new symptom rather than waiting for the next scheduled scan.

What this does not mean

• This is not a new cancer scan available to patients, and it is not coming to a clinic.
• The work was done in mouse models. It has not been tested in people with cancer.
• It does not diagnose cancer, choose treatment, or indicate whether anyone's cancer is spreading.
• It does not show that any therapy works in humans. No treatment was being tested here.
• The reporter genes are engineered into the mice deliberately. Human tumors do not carry them, so the method cannot simply be transferred.
• It is a research tool. Its value is in helping scientists ask sharper questions before clinical testing begins.

Questions this opens up for future research

• Can multiscale imaging show why some regions within a tumor resist treatment while others respond?
• Can it make preclinical testing of cancer therapies more informative?
• Which cancer types and biological questions suit this approach best?
• Could findings from these models eventually shape how imaging is used in people, even though the reporters themselves cannot be?

Sources

• Raffo-Iraolagoitia XL, Alyamani A, May S, and colleagues, "Multiscale in vivo imaging of tumor evolution using a germline conditional triple-reporter mouse," Nature Biotechnology, 2026 (PMID 42458052): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42458052/
• National Cancer Institute, Tests and Procedures Used to Diagnose Cancer: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/diagnosis-staging/diagnosis

How this page was made

An AI-assisted editorial system helped prepare this page. No named medical reviewer has reviewed it unless one is listed.

The National Cancer Information Foundation publishes Cancer Explained. It is not a diagnostic service, does not recommend treatments, and is not for emergencies.

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