Cancer cells invade lymphatic vessels to colonize lymph nodes and evade immune responses. Therefore, the idea of developing treatments to prevent cancers from exploiting the lymphatic system is attractive. However, any therapeutics targeting the lymphatics will need to be carefully designed, owing to the important roles lymphatics have in regulating the immune system and preventing lymphoedema.

The lungs are one of the most common sites of cancer metastasis. Lung-metastatic cancer can be modelled in mice using intravenous injections of melanoma cells. Stabilization windows can be applied to exposed surfaces of lungs of anaesthetized mice to enable intravital microscopy studies of cellular dynamics and effects of therapeutics.