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. 2014 Sep 19;9(9):e107514. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0107514

Figure 4. Curcumin sensitizes colon cancer stem cells to 5-FU in the high density tumor microenvironment co-culture.

Figure 4

HCT116 high density mono-cultures were either left untreated (HCT, Co.) or were co-cultured with MRC-5 in tumor microenvironment. Tumor microenvironment co-cultures were either left untreated (Co.), treated with curcumin alone (5µM), 5-FU alone (1, 5, and 10µM) or were pretreated for 4 h with curcumin (5µM) followed by treatment with 5-FU (0.1, 1, 2, 3µM). After 10 days of culture, total cell lysates of HCT116 high density cultures were prepared and analyzed by western blotting and quantitative densitometry for CSC marker ALDH1 (a), CD133 (b) and CD44 (c). Densitometric evaluation of protein expression as revealed by western blot analysis was performed in triplicate. Housekeeping protein β-actin served as a loading control in all experiments. Values were compared to the control and statistically significant values with p<0.05. Significant values are marked with (*).