Fig. 5.

Antitumor efficacy on the tumor-bearing nude mice model. a Tumor tissues. b Relative tumor growth curve. c Pathological features of tumor tissues in nude mice treated with physiological saline or PAV-AuNPs. Tumor issues were H&E stained. d Changes in body weight during the course of treatment. e Immunohistochemical representative images for cryosections of MDA-MB-231 tumor tissues after intratumoral injection with physiological saline, l- and d-PAV-AuNPs, respectively. Stained with LC3-II; the entire nucleus was stained with DAPI. * and ** present p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively