Fig. 5.

BAPN treatment delays ovarian cancer progression by reducing adhesions. (a) Experimental design: PBS or BAPN was intraperitoneally administrated to 20-weeks-old female ApoE−/− mice each day and continued for four weeks. A cohort of mice was sacrificed for further experiments. For the remaining mice, the drug treatment was stopped for two weeks before the establishment of ID8 allografts. (b) Hydroxyproline was measured in the plasma and diaphragm. (c) Masson’s Trichrome stain after BAPN treatment (left). The positive-staining percentage of 10 random fields was calculated (right). Bar represents 50 μm. (d) Cells adhesive to the omentum were analyzed four hours after ID8 intraperitoneal injection by fluorescence microscopy (left). The adhesive cells were determined from the total fluorescent intensity after digestion (right). Bar represents 200 μm. (e) In vivo luciferase measured at two weeks (top) and two months (bottom) post establishment in ApoE−/− mice with PBS or BAPN pre-treatment. Quantification of luminescence is represented as the radiance. (f) MMP-9 expression measured by IHC in tumor lesions of ApoE−/− mice with PBS or BAPN treatment. Each experiment includes data from 4 mice. Bar represents 50 μm. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.005