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. 2013 Sep 3;123(10):4390–4404. doi: 10.1172/JCI65856

Figure 4. miR-9 promotes invasion and metastasis in mouse and human SCC cells.

Figure 4

(A) Increased invasion in FaDu-miR-9 cells compared with FaDu-GFP cells (*P = 0.005). (B) Reduced invasion in B931-Zip-9 cells compared with B931-GFP control cells (*P = 0.005). All invasion assays were performed in triplicate. (C) Immunofluorescence of membrane-associated E-cadherin and α-catenin in tumors derived from FaDu cells transduced with GFP or miR-9. K14 was used to counterstain. Scale bar: 30 μm. (D) H&E staining showing a representative metastasis derived from FaDu-GFP cells exhibiting clustered epithelial cell morphology, whereas a metastasis from FaDu-miR-9 cells displayed poorly differentiated and EMT morphology (more obvious in the magnified panels). Scale bars: 50 μm (upper panels), 8 μm (lower panels). (E) Quantification of metastases showed reduced numbers of metastases in B931-Zip-9 mice (n = 5) compared with B931-GFP control mice (n = 6). *P = 0.04 for both chest wall and lung metastases. Metastases were identified grossly and confirmed by H&E staining. (F) Examples of multiple metastases in the chest wall and lung developed from a B931-GFP mouse compared with a single chest wall metastasis in a B931-Zip-9 mouse. Arrowheads point to metastases in the thoracic cavity.