Studies on the migration of gastric cancer cells in the zebrafish model.

A, At 53 hours post fertilization (hpf), the transplanted AGS cells which transfected galectin-3, PAR-1, MMP-1 siRNA and scRNA (red) were located in the center of yolk sac of living transgenic zebrafish in which embryonic vessels are visualized with green fluorescence at 4 hours post transplantation (hpt); up to 50 hpt were clearly detected only cancer cells. B, The number of migrated cells per embryo were counted, and shown as histogram. These data were derived from three replicated experiments. Scale bars, 200 μm and 50 μm in last panels. C and D, Increased expression of galectin-3, PAR-1 and MMP-1 in gastric cancer patients. C, Expression and localization of galectin-3, PAR-1 and MMP-1 in malignant tissues from gastric cancer patients using immunohistochemical staing (brown) with H&E by fluorescence microscopy. Magnification: (upper panel)×200; (lower panel)×400. D, mRNA of galectin-3, PAR-1 and MMP-1 levels in tissues of gastric cancer patients detected by RT-PCR (Figure S3). Malignant and normal tissues were obtained from 20 gastric patients subjected to RT-PCR, quantified and analyzed by NIH image analyzer. Higher expression levels of galectin-3, PAR-1 and MMP-1 in malignant tissues are shown as percentage increases over their levels in normal tissues.