Objective  To develop a reliable model of pancreatic carcinogenesis and liver metastasis in mice and preliminarily analyzemetastasis-related molecules.

  Methods  Liver metastasis models of pancreatic cancer were made by injecting murine Panc-2 cells inthe spleens of 12 C57/BL6 mice. Six mice in the control group were injected with phosphate buffered saline. Liver metastases were detected pathologically in the experimental group. Quantitative real-time PCR was used to analyze the variation in the expression levelsof metastasis-related molecules in the tumor tissue located in the spleen, metastatic tumor tissues in the liver, and liver tissue adjacent to metastatic carcinoma.

  Results  In the experimental group, the incidence rate of liver metastasis was 83.33%. An anatomicalstudy showed that there was a single giant tumor nodule at every injection site in the spleen, while multiple nodular metastases appeared in the livers of 10 mice, with the liver tumorigenesis rate 83.33%. The pathological results indicated that the tumor cell patternof liver metastasis was in accordance with pancreatic adenocarcinoma. CCL-17, CCL-22, CD44, and other molecules had higher impression levels in the metastatic tumor tissues in the liver and the tumor tissue of spleen than in the liver tissue adjacent to metastatic carcinoma. Expression levels of Ang-2, BAK, BAX, and other molecules were higher in the liver tissue adjacent to metastatic carcinoma, and the relative expression level of gene was more than 1 (P < 0.05).

  Conclusions  Intrasplenic injection of pancreatic cancer cells successfully developed a model of liver metastasis that partly mimicked the natural metastatic process, which showed variations in the expression levels of metastasis-related molecules similar to that in the human body. This is a reliable method to produce pancreatic cancer liver metastasis in mice and may be valuable in experimental studies for screening anti-tumor durgs.