Fig. 5.
Thrombin promotes the metastasis of circulating tumor cells by at least one fibrinogen-independent mechanism.
Fibrinogen-sufficient mice (A) and fibrinogen-deficient mice (B) were pretreated with 10 mg/kg hirudin or saline 20 minutes before injection of 7 × 104 B16-BL6 melanoma cells into the lateral tail vein. The mice were killed 21 days later and the surface pulmonary metastases quantitated. The data presented are the number of surface pulmonary metastases observed in individual mice. The horizontal bars represent the median value for each group. The median value for the hirudin-treated Fib− mice was 0 (B). The Pvalues were determined by the Mann-Whitney U test, 2 tailed.
