Cells were pretreated with the vehicle or NSC 667249 (0.3 μM) for 30min followed by treatment with IL-6 plus sIL6R (20 ng/ml) for another 30 min. The extent of C/EBPß (A), p65 (B) or STAT3 (C) phosphorylation was then determined by immunoblotting. Each column represents the mean ± S.E.M. of five independent experiments. *p<0.05, compared to the control group; # p<0.05, compared to the vehicle-treated group in the presence of IL-6 plus sIL6R. Cells were transfected with C/EBPß (D), NF-κB-luc (E) or VEGF-C promoter-luc-370 (F) plus renilla-luc for 48 h. After transfection, SV-LECs were pretreated with the vehicle or NSC 667249 (0.3 μM) for 30min followed by treatment with IL-6 plus sIL6R (20 ng/ml) for another 24 h. The luciferase activity was then determined. Each column represents the mean ± S.E.M. of at least four independent experiments. *p<0.05, compared to the control group; # p<0.05, compared to the vehicle-treated group in the presence of IL-6 plus sIL6R.