Figure 6: Induction of exosome miR-193a in peripheral blood increases the risk of metastatic colon cancer in the liver of patients.

(a) qPCR-quantification of mature miR-193a, miR-126a, miR-148a and miR-196b in exosomes of plasma collected from colon cancer patients with (n=15) or without (n=25) liver metastasis. (b) qPCR analysis of miR-193a level in the exosomes from peripheral blood of colon cancer patients without metastasis and follow-up investigation carried out six months after diagnosis. (c) Representative H&E-stained sections of colon tumour tissue (× 200 magnification) from patients at various cancer stages. Scale bars, 200 μm (left panel). qPCR analysis of miR-193a, miR-126a and miR-148a expression in colon cancer tissue and adjacent non-tumour tissue from the same patients (right panel). (d) Representative MVP (red) expression in patient tumour sections with Alexa Fluor 594 dye labelling anti-MVP antibodies (red) visualized with confocal microscopy. (e) Western blot analysis showing the level of MVP, Caprin1, Cyclin D and c-MYC in colon cancer tissue (c) and adjacent non-tumour tissue (a) from the same patient at various stages (I, II and III) as indicated. GAPDH used as a loading control. Data are representative of three independent experiments. *P<0.05 and **P<0.01 (two-tailed t-test; error bars, s.e.m.); NS represents non-significance.