Article Figures & Data
Figures
- Figure 1.
A: Left panel: Low-magnification images of dual-color HCT-116 colon cancer cells expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) in the nucleus and red fluorescent protein (RFP) in the cytoplasm in vitro (Bar=20 μm). HCT-116 dual-color cells were cultured in RPMI-1640 medium supplemented with 10% heat-inactivated FBS and 1% penicillin and streptomycin. Yellow arrows indicate mitotic cells. Right panel: High-magnification images of a mitotic HCT-116 dual-color cell. Metaphase chromosomes are clearly visualized (Bar=5 μm). Images of live cells were captured with an Olympus FV1000 confocal microscope. B: Bright-field and fluorescence low-magnification images of primary and metastatic tumors in nude mice. Green arrows indicate liver metastasis. Blue arrows indicate splenic tumor (injection site). Yellow arrow indicates retroperitoneal metastasis (Bar=10 μm). All images were captured with an Olympus SZX7 microscope. C: High-magnification images of dual-color HCT-116 cells in each organ. Upper panel: Liver metastasis. Middle panel: Splenic tumor. Lower panel: Retroperitoneal metastasis.
- Figure 2.
High-magnification images of cells cultured from tumors in each organ. A: Liver metastasis. B: Splenic tumor. C: Retroperitoneal metastasis. In each tissue, mitotic cells and multi-nucleated cells ware observed. The inset contains multi-nucleated cells with high-magnification images of these cells shown in the adjacent panel. Blue arrows indicate multi-nucleated cells. White arrows indicate vacuolar degeneration. Multi-nucleated cells suggest the possibility of cancer-cell fusion. Images were captured with an Olympus FV1000 confocal microscope.
- Figure 3.
Five randomly-selected, low-magnification visual fields were quantified for the number of mono-nucleate, mitotic, and multi-nucleated HCT-116 cancer cells. The frequency of each cell type in the liver metastasis, spleen tumor, and retroperitoneal metastasis was plotted in the bar graphs. There were no significant differences in the ratios of the cell types between the different tumor sites.
