Fig. 3.

Results of gene expression analyses in both cell lines treated for 3 h with v- mPS/nPS (A and B). In addition to THP-1 cells directly exposed (de) to mPS/nPS, the experiments were performed in THP-1 treated with the supernatant obtained from A549 cells that had been exposed to mPS/nPS (ie) for the same time. Bax and Bcl-2 was tested for the assessment of genes involved in cell survival and reported as Bax/Bcl-2 ratio to highlight the balance between pro-apoptotic Bax and anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 proteins.