Figure 5. Piperine enhances IL-6 and TNF-α expression in peritoneal resident macrophages in an mTOR-dependent manner.

Isolated mouse peritoneal resident macrophages were pretreated with indicated concentrations of PI3K inhibitor LY294002, AKT inhibitor MK-2206 or mTOR inhibitor rapamycin for 30 min. Piperine (40 μM) were added to the media for 1 h and the cells were stimulated with 100 ng/ml LPS for 24 h. Cytokines in culture media were measured. All experiments were repeated for three times independently with one representative experiment presented in A., B. and C. (mean ± SD, n = 3). The significance was estimated by one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey's multiple comparison test. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001.