Figure 5. Chronic treatment with SkE is as effective as imatinib in inhibiting the growth of tumors derived from CML cells in athymic mice.

A total of 5'10⁶ K562 leukemic cells were implanted in both flanks in athymic mice. After tumor establishment, when the tumors reached 100 mm3, animals received a daily intraperitoneal injection of vehicle, imatinib (60 mg/kg body weight) or SkE (1 mg/kg body weight). (A) This picture shows the size of tumors at day 16 post injection with vehicle (left panel), Imatinib (middle panel) and SkE (right panel). (B) This panel shows the evolution of tumor growth, expressed in cpm at different times post-injection of the same treatments. (C) Tumors were removed, frozen and cut to perform immune staining. Slides containing a representative section of each tumor were incubated with either an anti-phospho-ERK1/2 or anti-ERK1/2 antibody. Slides were finally mounted and analyzed under a fluorescence microscope.