Differences in tumor volumes between the two groups were highly significant ( p < 0.01) from day 12 onwards ( Figure 1 a) and culminated in a 52.8% reduction of mean tumor volume in treated mice on day 14 at the end of the study.
In accordance, in TUNEL staining—a sensitive method for the detection of DNA strand breaks during apoptosis [ 22 ]—we observed a 2.1-fold increased average apoptosis rate in viable tumor areas of treated versus untreated mice, which did not reach statistical significance ( p = 0.065, Figure 1 f).