Fig. 1: Intravenous BCG administration delays the growth of B16-F10 lung metastases.

a Schematic diagram showing treatment strategy. b Survival curve of B16-F10 tumor-bearing mice treated with IV PBS (n = 13) or BCG (n = 18) at day 7, pooled from three independent experiments. c Survival curve of B16-F10 tumor-bearing mice treated with IV PBS (n = 6) or BCG (n = 6) at day 14, from one experiment. d Representative H&E images of tissue sections from tumor-bearing lungs of PBS (n = 4) or BCG (n = 6) -treated mice at day 20 after tumor cell inoculation and quantification of the tumor area, number of tumor nodules and average area per tumor nodule in lung cross-sections, representative of two independent experiments. Scale bars correspond to 1 mm in length. e Number of clonogenic colonies in single cell suspensions from tumor-bearing lungs shown in (d) (n = 4 mice for PBS IV and n = 6 for BCG IV, from one experiment). f Survival curve of B16-F10 tumor-bearing mice treated with IV PBS (n = 9), SC BCG (n = 6), IN BCG (n = 6) or IV BCG (n = 6), from one experiment. g Survival curve of B16-F10 tumor-bearing mice treated with IV PBS (n = 6), heat-killed IV BCG (n = 5) or different doses of live IV BCG (n = 6 mice/group), from one experiment. P values were calculated using two-tailed unpaired Student’s t test at a 95 % CI (d, e) or log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test (b, c, f, g). Data depicted as mean ± SEM (d, e). PBS phosphate-buffered saline, IV intravenous, SC subcutaneous, IN intranasal, HK heat-killed.