Figure 6: Glucocorticoids suppress ovarian cancer cell abdominal metastasis.

(a) SKOV-I6iv cells stably expressing pSuper-GFP-Luc plus Rap1B or GFP were orthotopically injected into the mouse ovary. The kinetics of cancer abdominal metastasis was monitored by BLI. Representative BLI images are shown on day 28 after implantation. (b) Quantification results of abdominal metastases by BLI measurements (total BLI minus primary tumour BLI). Data are normalized to the means of PBS-GFP or PBS-Rap1B (n=4–13; data were combined from two separate experiments). (c) Individual abdominal organ metastasis was measured by human-specific GAPDH levels to quantify metastatic SKOV-I6iv cells. Data are normalized to the means of PBS–GFP from individual organ±s.e.m. (n=4–8). (d) Expression of miR-708 in primary orthotopically implanted ovarian tumors. Data are normalized to the means of PBS-GFP±s.e.m. (n=4–8). (e) Western blot analysis of Rap1B expression from orthotopically implanted primary tumours. (f) Quantitative analysis of the Rap1B protein level from e, and normalized with the actin level. Histograms represent normalized means±s.e.m. Student’s t-test (two-tailed) was used for statistical analysis (*P<0.05; **P<0.01; ***P<0.001; n.s., no significance).