Fig 2: Effects of dabigatran on lung permeability and inflammation markers in the lungs of BALB/c mice injected with 4T1 breast cancer cells. Mice were treated with vehicle (black symbols) or dabigatran etexilate (grey symbols) as described in Section 2.5. (A) depicts retention of Evans blue (EB) in the lung parenchyma, reflecting lung permeability. Control mice did not receive cancer cells and were euthanized at the end of the dabigatran pre-treatment to exclude the possibility that dabigatran affected pulmonary permeability of healthy animals before their inoculation with 4T1 cancer cells. After dabigatran/vehicle pre-treatment, the other mice were injected intravenously with 4T1 breast cancer cells or the vehicle and euthanized 24 h, 2 days, and 7 days after injection. (B–D) show the levels of Ang-2, E-selectin, and MMP-9, respectively. (E) shows representative Western blot images of Ang-2, E-selectin, and MMP-9 with densitometric data after their normalization to the total protein used as loading control based on the stain-free technique as described in Materials and Methods. For (A–D), statistical analysis was performed with two-way ANOVA and an appropriate post hoc test. The symbols *, **, and *** denote statistical significance at p < .05, p < .01, and p < .001, respectively, and the data are depicted as the median ± IQR.

Fig 3: Western blot in five groups of chondrocytes. (A) SELE. (B) MMP2. (C) COL1. (D) Electrophoretic images. **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 versus IL-1β group.