Figure 1.

Resveratrol promotes transient accelerated senescence and apoptosis in vivo. (a) Effects of daily oral administrations of 40 and 200 mg/kg of RSV on the growth of PROb tumours in vivo. PROb cells were subcutaneously injected at day 0 to BD-IX rats and the treatments with RSV or with the vehicle (Ctl) began at day 2 or 14. Data are medians of tumour volumes of nine rats per group±the first and third quartile of one representative experiment among three. No statistically significant differences were found by the Mann–Whitney's test. Inserts show the median±the first and third quartile of plasma concentrations of free and metabolised RSV measured 1 h after the last administration of RSV to the rats of the experiment shown. (b) Microscopic evaluation of DNA fragmentation by TUNEL staining in PROb tumours. Pixels intensities were measured on 10 random microscopic fields of five tumours per group and is plotted as mean intensity±S.D. and compared with control tumours (Ctl). (c) Microscopic evaluation of SA-β-galactosidase activity in PROb tumours resected after 7 and 10 days of daily treatments with 200 mg/kg of RSV (R200). Negative pixels intensities measurement related to SA-β-galactosidase staining were performed as described above. Typical microscopic fields are shown on the left; bar, 100 μm. On both panels, statistical significance was determined by the Student's t-test with P<0.05 (*), P<0.01 (**) and P<0.001 (***)