Figure 5. Tumor cell dissemination to internal organs starts at 3 weeks of age.

Dct expression was measured by qRT-PCR in the lymph nodes, lungs, heart, kidney, liver, stomach, colon, bone marrow, thymus, bladder, and small intestine (n = 11 organs per mouse) collected from RET.AAD (RET^+/–) mice aged 1 week (n = 3), 3 weeks (n = 3), and 5 weeks (n = 4). As controls, 11 age-matched nontransgenic littermates (ret^–/–) were used.