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. 2012 Apr 24;7(4):e35094. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035094

Figure 12. Metastatic spread of tumor cells to the draining lymph nodes is abrogated by α9 integrin and VEGF-D knock down in 468LN cells:

Figure 12

(A) Metastasis to lymph nodes were validated by the visual localisation of many cancer cells in 468LN tumor draining nodes identified by the GFP-marker and their absence in lymph nodes draining α9 integrin and VEGF-D knock down tumor implants. Nuclei were stained blue by DAPI. (B, C) Above conclusions were further validated by measuring the human mitochondrial-specific marker MTCO2 at the mRNA level with qRT-PCR (B) and protein level with western blot (C) was high in lymph nodes draining 468LN tumors. This process was nearly completely abrogated in both Δα9/468LN and ΔVEGF-D/468LN tumor implants. Data were derived from 16 lymph nodes. Four lymph nodes draining into an individual tumor in a single mouse were pooled to extract RNA and proteins, showing the data in four mice; Matrigel was retrieved from four implants. Data represents mean (n = 4) ± S.E, *p<0.05, *p<0.001.