Fig. 6

Histological analysis of representative animals at the end of treatment. Animals were sacrificed at the end of treatment and brain sections were stained using Massson’s Trichrome staining (top) for overall histological assessment, Iba1 staining (middle) for assessment of macrophage activation inside and surrounding the tumor, and Prussian blue staining (bottom) as an iron staining of brain sections from all different treatment groups, including examples from responding and nonresponding animals. See Additional file 1 (Figure S1) for further high-magnification images and a more elaborate explanation regarding the observations made based on these staining. GCV ganciclovir, PBS phosphate-buffered saline, SHAM sham-operated