Establishment of cell clones with different metastatic potential from the metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma cell line MHCC97

Figure 1 Subcutaneous tumor formation of the two clones. Thirty days after sc injection of 5 × 10⁶ tumor cells for each nude mouse, the average s.c tumor diameter was (1.94 ± 0.36) cm for MHCC97-H as against (0.84 ± 0.47) cm for MHCC97-L.

Figure 2 The liver tumor size of the two clones 5 wk after orthotopic inoculation. The tumor geometric mean diameter (GMD) for MHCC97-H was (1.42 ± 0.11) cm as against (0.90 ± 0.26) cm for MHCC97-L.

Figure 3 Photomicroscopy of lung metastases of the two clones. MHCC97-H (3A) produced large metastatic lesion pressing the bronchioles while MHCC97-L (3B) only formed small metastasis. HE × 100.

Figure 4 Photomicroscopy of MHCC97-L (4A) and MHCC97-H (4B) illustrating the clear differences in the number of nucleoli. Giemsa × 400.

Figure 5 Cell growth curve of two clones. 4 × 10⁴ viable cells were cultured in each well of the 24 well culture plate. Cell numbers were determined for 7 consecutive days. Each time point represents the mean of duplicate cell counts.