Figure 3.

IKEPLUS induces apoptotic cell death of infected cells macrophages. (A) A three-to-four-fold increase in the apoptosis rate of bone marrow macrophages (BMM) or peritoneal macrophages (PM) treated with LPS (100 ng/mL) in combination with IFNγ (200 U/mL) or Staurosporine (1 μM overnight (O/N)); as compared to uninfected macrophages was noted. (B)There was an approximately 20% increase in the apoptosis observed in BMM treated with various variants of IKEPLUS compared to wild-type mc²155 within 24 hours. This increment decreased to 10% but was still significant at 48 h. (C) Infected PMs did not illustrate a significant difference in the activation of caspase/apoptosis at 24 h but a 30% increase in apoptosis was noted in the samples infected with IKEPLUS variants compared to wild-type mc²155 at 48 h. Mean ±SD is plotted (n = 3). (*** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01 and * p < 0.05) by ANOVA.