Figure 4
Inhibition of B16-BL6 lung metastasis and VEGF-induced angiogenesis by s.c. immunizations with DCs loaded with EphA2-derived peptides. (A and B), C57BL/6 mice received i.v. injections of 2 × 105 B16-BL6 cells followed by s.c. immunizations with 1 × 106 DCs loaded with the indicated peptides on days 3, 10 and 17 (N = 4/group). The animals were sacrificed on day 28, with representative macroscopic pictures of the harvested lungs from each group (A) and the numbers of pulmonary surface metastases counted (B) P < 0.001 for both mEphA2671–679/30–44 (*) and mEphA2682–689/30–44 (**) treatments in comparison to OVA control for the number of metastasis based on two-tailed Student-t test. (C), mEphA2-targeted immunizations inhibited the vascular formation in the Matrigel plug assay. Syngeneic mice pre-immunized with control OVA- (left) or EphA2- (right) peptides were injected s.c. with Matrigel containing VEGF. After 10 days, the plugs were removed and photographed. The picture shows representative VEGF-containing plugs excised from total 5 mice/group.