Figures & data
Figure 1. Therapeutic effect on hepatocellular cancer cells. (A) Confocal microscopy shows a decreased numbers of cells in the group with combination therapy of RFH plus HSV-TK/plasmid and HSV-TK/lentivirus, compared with the control, RFH alone and gene alone groups. (B) MTS assay was performed for six samples of each cell group, which demonstrated the lowest cell proliferation in the combination therapy group with RFH plus HSV-TK/lentivirus compared with those in other five groups (*p < .05).
Figure 2. Optical/x-ray images of tumours in six animal groups at days 0, 7 and 14 after different treatments. (A) The optical images demonstrate a significant decrease of photon signals of tumours in the animal group treated by combined therapy (gene + RFH), compared with RFH alone, gene alone and control animal groups, with the lentivirus/HSV-TK + RFH group showing the lowest signal. (B) Quantitative analysis of relative photon counts in each group shows that the lowest relative photon counts were seen in the group treated with the combination therapy of lentivirus/HSV-TK + GCV plus RFH (*p < .05).
Figure 3. (A) Ultrasound images of tumours in six animal groups (arrows). The tumour size in the group with combination therapy of HSV-TK/lentivirus + GCV plus RFH is the smallest, compared with other six groups. (B) Quantitative analysis of tumour volumes in six mice of each group shows that the lowest relative tumour volumes were seen in the group treated with the combination therapy of lentivirus/HSV-TK + GCV plus RFH (*p < .05).
Figure 4. qRT-PCR quantitative analysis of HSV-TK gene expression in cells and tumour tissues. RFH could enhance HSV-TK gene expression level in both HCC cells and mice tumours.
Figure 5. Histology of tumours. Representative tumours harvested from six different animal groups, showing the smallest tumour size treated by combination therapy (lentivirus/HSV-TK + GCV plus RFH), compared with other treatments.
Figure 6. Apoptosis with TUNEL staining of tumour tissues. (A) Apoptotic staining shows more apoptotic cells in the combination therapy group (gene + RFH) in comparison to the control groups. (B) Quantitative analysis of apoptosis in tumour tissues for six mice in each group shows that RFH combined with either plasmid/HSV-TK + GCV or lentivirus/HSV-TK + GCV could induce significantly more apoptosis than the therapy of plasmid/HSV-TK + GCV, lentivirus/HSV-TK or RFH alone (*p < .05).
