Change of Apoptosis and Glucose Metabolism in Lung Cancer Xenografts during Cytotoxic and Anti-Angiogenic Therapy Assessed by Annexin V Based Optical Imaging and ¹⁸F-FDG-PET/CT

Figure 4

Quantitative immunohistochemistry. (a, b) TUNEL staining demonstrates the induction of tumor apoptosis in response to both drugs; however, sunitinib induces an earlier and stronger apoptosis in the tumors. For carboplatin-treated tumors, differences to the controls are significant only at day 9 (), whereas apoptosis is already significantly increased in sunitinib-treated tumors at treatment day 4 ( for day 4, for day 9). (c) Linear regression analysis showing a significant increase in the TUNEL/DAPI positive area fraction during carboplatin treatment (R² = 0.57, slope: 0.01, ). (d) A significant increase in the TUNEL/DAPI positive area fraction is observed during sunitinib treatment in the linear regression analysis (R² = 0.36, slope: 0.02, ).

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