16. PC-3 Bearing Nude Mice

32 male, 5 weeks old nude mice were used in this study and divided into 4 groups. After housing for one week, all the mice were inoculated subcutaneously with a solution of 3 million PC-3 cells in 0.2 ml PBS mixed with 0.1 ml metrigel. From day 1, the four control groups, AHCC, GCP and AHCC plus GCP were daily treated orally with water, 10% AHCC, 10% GCP and 10% AHCC mixed with 10% GCP in a volume of 0.1ml/10g body weight, respectively. The tumor sizes were measured every 3 or 4 days and calculated with the formula of length (x) width (x) height (x) 0.52.

As shown in the Figure, on day 10 after treatment, the co-administration of AHCC and GCP inhibited the tumor growth significantly compared to the control group. Even the tumor sizes were the same among all the four groups on the day 5.

On day 19, we stopped giving AHCC to the AHCC group and stopped giving GCP to the AHCC plus GCP group, but kept giving GCP and AHCC to the AHCC plus GCP group, and GCP to the GCP group. Doing so gave us have the capability of observing the real influences of AHCC and GCP to tumors in both prevention and treatment.

On the 33^rd day after stopping AHCC and GCP, the tumor sizes in the AHCC and AHCC + GCP groups became as large as those in the control group

However, when we treated these mice with AHCC and GCP again for another 10 days, the tumor sizes went down again. On day 50 of the treatment, we sacrificed all the mice and took out the tumor tissues. The final tumors are shown in the above picture. At the end of the treatment, AHCC, GCP, and AHCC+GCP groups had much smaller tumors than did the control group.