To confirm the effect of macrophage ablation on tumour xenograft vascularisation, we also employed nitroreductase-mediated macrophage ablation on the MDA-MB-231-xenografted Tg(mpeg1:NTR:mcherry) larvae by treating them with 5 mM metronidazole (Okuda et al., 2015; Petrie et al., 2014). This evidence concerns the gene MPEG1 and neoplasm.