Figure 3

ARTEMIN (ARTN) stimulates metastasis of estrogen receptor (ER) negative mammary carcinoma (ER-MC) cells. (a) Number of mice with micrometastases per lung that received either lateral tail vein injection of BT549 (vector (VEC) or ARTN) cells (left panel) or from xenograft growth of MDA-MB-231(VEC or ARTN) cells (right panel) in the mammary fat pad. (b) H&E stained sections of lungs from mice that received lateral tail vein injection of BT549 (VEC or ARTN) cells (left panel), H&E staining of representative tumors from mice that received MDA-MB-231 (VEC or ARTN) cells in the mammary fat pad (middle panel) and H&E stained sections of lungs from the same group of mice (right panel). 200× magnification. Arrows indicate metastatic nodules. (c) Total RNA was isolated from lung and liver of individual mice that received either lateral tail vein injection of BT549 (VEC or ARTN) cells or mammary fat pad injection of MDA-MB-231 (VEC or ARTN) cells. Quantitative PCR (qPCR) was performed to measure the messenger RNA (mRNA) expression of human hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (hHPRT) in the lung and liver. Mouse glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (mgapdh) was used as an internal control. The relative expression of hHPRT vs mgapdh was calculated for each pair of BT549 and MDA-MB-231 cells. **, P < 0.01; ***, P < 0.001.