Fig. 1

Characterization of EGb treated mice underwent intrasplenic injection of colon cancer cells. a Timeline of animal trial and design. Mice were received at 4 wks of age. Food intake and body weight measurement were performed weekly from 4-wk. to 21-wk. of age. At 6 wks of age, mice were injected with SW620-luc cells. Daily injection of EGb (PBS was used as the negative control) was conducted from 16 wks of age to 21 wks of age. Mice were sacrificed after 5 wks of EGb injection. b Bioluminescence Imaging (BLI). Mice were imaged weekly from wk. 1 to wk. 6 of intraperitoneal injection of PBS or EGb. Representative imaging was shown for mice with positive bioluminescent signals. c Characterization of mouse liver containing metastatic tumors in PBS and EGb mice. Representative pictures with liver tumors are in the left panel. Quantification of numbers of tumors in liver after EGb treatment is shown in the right panel. Y-axis represents the number of tumors in the metastatic liver per animal. d Necropsy and pathology by structural staining using H&E of mouse liver. Representative images with metastatic tumor in the liver were shown for PBS and EGb groups (5× magnification). Gross structure was stained in pink and nuclei were stained in purple. Dotted lines were used to circle the necrotic area in the tumors that were quantified. Right panel shows the quantification of necrotic area (%) in PBS and EGb treated mouse liver. Y-axis indicates the percentage of necrotic area within the tumor. e TUNEL analysis of apoptosis in liver tumors. Representative pictures are shown. Brown dots are the positively stained nuclei of apoptotic cells. Quantification of apoptotic cells in PBS and EGb treated livers are in the right panel. Y-axis indicates the percentage of apoptotic cells in the liver tumor. Asterisks (*) indicate statistical significance (n > 4 animals, p < 0.05) when compared to the PBS group