Figure 6. Celastrol induces cell apoptosis and inhibits AKT/mTOR/P70S6K pathway in PC-3 cancer cells.
A. Celastrol inhibited cell viability of prostrate PC-3 cancer cells. Cell viability was quantified by MTS assay. Columns, mean from three different experiments; bars, standard deviation, **, P < 0.01 vs. VEGF alone. B. Celastrol induced PC-3 cancer cell apoptosis in concentration-dependent and time-dependent manners by the cleaved-PARP analysis. C, Celastrol suppressed the phosphorylation of mTOR signaling pathway kinases in PC-3 prostate cancer cell. To examine mTOR pathway in prostate tumor cells, normal cultured PC-3 cells (non-starving) were directly treated with indicated dilutions of Celastrol for 4 h. Proteins from different treatments were applied to Western blotting and probed with specific antibodies. Similar data were obtained from three independent experiments.