Fig. 4.

VCP promotes metastasis of CRC in vitro and in vivo. a and b Cell invasion experiments demonstrated that transfection with shVCP significantly inhibited the invasive capacity of HCT116 cells, and transfection with lenti-VCP promoted the invasive capacity of RKO cells. Values are expressed as the mean ± SD of experiments performed in triplicate. c Protein expression levels of N-cadherin, vimentin, and E-cadherin in shVCP-transfected HCT116 cells and lenti-VCP transfected RKO cells. Actin was used as the internal control. Western blot was repeated three times. d Single and merged images were taken to show immunofluorescence staining of N-cadherin (green) and vimentin (red), accompanied by nuclear staining (blue) with DAPI. e Representative H&E images of lung metastases were shown for indicated cell lines. The histogram showed the number of metastatic nodules. The table showed incidence of lung metastasis in different groups. (Color figure online)