Figure 6.

Effects of des-Arg⁹-bradykinin (DABK) treatment in vascularization and vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) expression in lungs of wild-type (WT) and B1 receptor knockout mice (B1^−/−) with metastatic melanoma. Lung metastasis was induced by the injection of B16F10 cells in the tail vein of WT and B1^−/− mice, and after 5 days of injection, mice received DABK (1 mg/kg/day) for 15 days. (A) VCAM-1-positive cells in metastatic lungs of WT and B1^−/− mice that received DABK treatment (***p = 0.0003, n = 6). Left panel: representative images, right panel: quantification of positive expression ± SEM, relative to WT-DABK in 10 different high magnification fields. (B) Left: histological images showing vessels (red arrows) in lungs after 20 days of B16F10 cells injection. Right: quantification of number of vessels per field. Data are expressed as number of vessels ± SEM (WT: n = 7, B1^−/−: n = 7, *p = 0.01). (C) Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-positive cells in metastatic lungs of WT and B1^−/− mice that received DABK treatment (***p = 0.0001, n = 6).