Figure 3

Overexpression Oct4 and Nanog promotes proliferation and metastasis of HCC in vivo. (A) 97 L-Ctrol cells and 97 L-ON cells were injected subcutaneously into the right flank of nude mice. Six weeks after implantation, 97 L-ON cells produced larger tumors than control cells. (B) The tumor size from each group was measured every 3 days and weighed before dissection. There are significant differences in tumor size between the two groups (all P < 0.05). (C) The average weight of the 97 L-ON tumors was significantly increased compared with the 97 L-Ctrol tumors (P = 0.001). (D) The characteristic pictures of intrahepatic invasion (top, H & E staining, black arrows point to the invasive nodules), vascular invasion (middle, CD31 staining, black arrows point to the vascular invasion), and lung metastasis (bottom, H & E, black arrows point to the metastatic nodules in lung). (E) Number of disseminated tumor nodules in liver. More intrahepatic disseminated tumor nodules can be found in the 97 L-ON group (P = 0.03). (F) Number of metastatic tumor nodules in lung. More metastatic nodules in lung can be found in the 97 L-ON group (P = 0.018).