eCAM 2010;7(2) 193 Figure 3. Body weight and implanted tumor weight of HBV-viremia mice. HepG2 2.2.15 cells (107) were inoculated subcutaneously into the flank of SCID mice. (A) Body weight was measured on post-inoculation Days 13 and 24. (B) HepG2 2.2.15 tumors were excised and weighed after animals were sacrificed on Day 28. Data represent mean SE. 3TC and BNE do not have anti-tumor activity in this animal model. Suppression of Serum HBsAg by 3TC and BNE Blood was withdrawn from animals when tumor size reached 400 mg on Day 13 and after the 10 consecutive days of drug treatment that ended on Day 24 (Fig. 1). After the 10-day treatment with 3TC (by gavage), the level of HBsAg decreased by 36.1% (Fig. 4A). When animals were fed BNE by gavage or were injected intraperitoneally with the same amount of BNE (195 mg kg 1), serum HBsAg level decreased by 32.6% and 18.4%, respectively. In contrast, serum HBsAg increased by 19.3% in the vehicle-only control group fed distilled water. Thus, although the suppression of HBsAg level was not significant in all treatments, a trend of serum HBsAg suppression was observed. Figure 4. Effects of BNE on serum HBsAg level and serum HBV DNA level in HBV-viremia mice. HepG2 2.2.15 cells (107) were subcuta- neously inoculated into the flank of SCID mice. On post-inoculation Days 13 and 24, blood was withdrawn from drug-treated HBV-viremia animals, and (A) serum HBsAg level was measured by ELISA, and (B) serum HBV DNA level was determined by quantitative real-time PCR. Data represent mean SE *P < 0.05 by paired t-test. ***P < 0.001 by one-way ANOVA and Dunnett’s test. Suppression of Serum HBV DNA by 3TC and BNE Quantitative real-time PCR showed that no serum HBV DNA was detected in the sham group (Fig. 4B). However, a 55% increase in HBV DNA level was observed in the vehicle group (2.78 105 copies ml 1 on Day 13 to 4.31 105 copies ml 1 on Day 24), in which only distilled water was given by gavage during the 10-day period. In the 3TC group, the serum HBV DNA level was suppressed by 50% from Day 13 to Day 24 (1.65 106 copies ml 1 to 8.25 105 copies ml 1). For the BNE group, BNE administered intraperitoneally sup- pressed the serum HBV DNA level by 85% (3.47 106 copies ml 1 to 5.12 105 copies ml 1) compared with only 40% for the gavage route (1.64 106 copies ml 1 to 9.81 105 copies ml 1).