Endothelial CEACAM1 up-regulates the expression of VEGF-C and -D. (A) Overexpression of CEACAM1 in HDMECs results in up-regulation of VEGF-C in gene array as well as quantitative RT-PCR-analyses. Error bars represent the standard deviation. Also, VEGF-D (B) is up-regulated in both analyses even more than VEGF-C. Endothelial CEACAM1 overexpression was performed via adenoviral transfection, and LacZ-transfected HDMECs were used as control. Gene array (left: spots in duplicate, middle panel: densitometric quantification of the spots), LightCycler (right). (C) At protein level, VEGF-D is detectable in a higher amount in CEACAM1-overexpressing HDMECs in comparison to wild-type HDMECs (left panel) as demonstrated via densitometric quantification, which shows a 2-fold increase (right panel).