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. 2014 Mar 10;14(4):2058–2064. doi: 10.1021/nl5002313

Figure 5.

Figure 5

Quantification of cytotoxicity of CPP-ELPBC drug carriers. (A) Cytotoxicity of CPP-ELPBC carriers appended with BH3 peptide drug was evaluated by a modified cell survival assay. HeLa cells were incubated with Arg5-ELPBC-cBH3, Arg8-ELPBC-cBH3, or ELPBC-cBH3 with cleavable peptide drug cargo for 1 h at 37 or 42 °C. HeLa cells were also incubated with controls including Arg8-ELPBC-BH3 with noncleavable peptide drug cargo and free BH3 peptide alone. Cells were washed and returned to complete media for 24 h before cell survival was quantified by MTS assay. *Indicates p < 0.005 between thermal conditions (two-way ANOVA, Bonferroni posthoc test for multiple comparisons). (B) Induction of apoptosis was evaluated by quantification of caspase-3 activity. Caspase-3 activity was quantified in HeLa cell lysates after treatment with ELPBC-cBH3, Arg5-ELPBC-cBH3, Arg8-ELPBC-cBH3, or free BH3 peptide for 1 h at 37 or 42 °C. *Indicates p < 0.01 between thermal conditions (two-way ANOVA, Bonferroni posthoc test for multiple comparisons). Data represents mean of three experiments ± SEM.