Fig. 4.

Breast cancer skeletal metastasis inhibition after ITGB3 knockdown a The line graph (x-axis: time (in days) after tumor cell injection (tumor cell inj.); y-axis: bioluminescence in photons/second/cm²/steradian) shows quantitation of bioluminescence imaging (BLI) signals from control rats (red color) and rats treated with a miRNA against integrin β3 (green color). Below the graph, a time line is given, indicating the (relative) time of tumor cell injection, and of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; indicating the volume of soft tissue lesions) and volume computed tomography (VCT; indicating the volume of osteolytic lesions) measurements, as indicated by arrows. Below this time line, the mean values and corresponding ranges are given for the treated rats, only. The breast cancer skeletal metastases of experimental rats were monitored initially after discontinuation of the doxycycline intake (the time point is indicated with a dashed line). The cells of the specific cell clone I5 were injected into the saphenous artery of the first four rats (rat 1 to rat 4). The other three rats (rat 5 to rat 7) received cells from the parent cell clone and these rats were used as controls. The difference in light emission between miRNA treated and control rats was highly significant (p < 0.001) as indicated by red asterisks. b BLI images (left panel) and VCT images (middle and right panels) show the status of rat 1 at 20 and 28 days (upper panel) and at 30 and 49 days after tumor cell inoculation (lower panel), respectively. Clearly, the luminescence signal is no longer visible at the later time point, and the bones show re-calcification