Fig. 6

LAE effect on tumor metastasis in tail vein injection model. a Flowchart of animal experiments. MDA-MB-231 (5 × 10⁷) were intravenous injected in nude mouse. After 1 week of injection, the tumor bearing mice were randomly subdivided into 2 groups: Control; 0.5% LAE. b Growth curves of body weight in intravenous injection nude mouse model. c Left panel: Representative new metastatic tumors which formed after injecting the MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells into the vein of mice; Middle and right panels: The numbers and weights of new metastatic tumors. d Representative lung and liver tissues of intravenous injection nude mice. White arrows represent the metastatic tumor nodules. e Metastatic tumor nodules in the lung and liver tissues were examined by H&E staining (White arrow: Cancer cells invade the lumen of a large blood vessel. Black arrow: Metastatic tumor nodules substitute a segment of the vascular wall or exist in the liver tissues. Red arrow: inflammatory infiltration in blood vessel). f p-SMAD3 and p-Erk1/2 levels were examined by immunoblotting in lung and liver tissues (tail vein injection model). Values represent the mean ± SD (n = 3)