Fig. 2

Increased Il1b in the pre-metastatic lung of orthotopic HCC xenografts. (A) Volcano plot showing dysregulated genes (Hepa1-6 vs. Ctrl) in the lungs of mice 2 weeks after orthotopic implantation of Hepa1-6-luc2 cells or matrigel in the liver. (B) KEGG analysis of dysregulated genes in the pre-metastatic lung of Hepa1-6-luc2 orthotopic xenograft. (C) The network of the top one important module was visualized by cytoscape. (D-E) Increased expression of Il1b in the pre-metastatic lung of HCC. Detection of Il1b in the lungs of mice 2 weeks after orthotopic implantation of matrigel or Hepa1-6-luc2 cells in the liver by qPCR (D) and IHC (E). Scale bar, 25 μm. (F) Co-localization of IL-1β and F4/80 in the pre-metastatic lung. Double immunofluorescence staining of IL-1β (red) and F4/80 (green) in the pre-metastatic lung. Scale bar, 10 μm. (G) Genotyping of Il1b^−/− mice. Upper, schematic diagram of primer design for genotyping; lower, agarose gel electrophoresis of the PCR products from WT and Il1b^−/− mice. Data are displayed as the mean ± SEM; unpaired Student’s t test (D, E). **, P < 0.01; ***, P < 0.001