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. 2016 Aug 20;7(51):84093–84117. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.11455

Figure 7. Effect of HERV-K overexpression on tumor growth in mouse xenografts.

Figure 7

No significant increase in tumor growth was observed in immunodeficient mice xenografted with MDA-MB-231 cells transduced with Kenv compared with cells transduced with pLVX (vector only) (A). Tumor sizes and weights were not significantly increased in xenografts of cells transduced with Kenv (p = 0.7397) (B). A slight but nonsignificant loss in body weight was observed in mice bearing Kenv cells compared with pLVX cells (p = 0.7635) (C), and qRT-PCR was employed to determine the expression of HERV-K in MDA-MB-231+Kenv or +pLVX. Significantly increased expression of HERV-K and CDK5 in MDA-MB-231+Kenv cells was observed, compared with MDA-MB-231+pLVX cells (D). There was also significantly reduced expression of p53 in MDA-MB-231+Kenv cells (D). Increased metastasis to lung (red fluorescence) in MDA-MB- 231+Kenv cells was observed (E). A summary of pathways related to HERV-K Env protein is shown (F).