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. 2017 Feb 15;8(13):20813–20824. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.15343

Figure 2. Aberrant spindles and impaired spindle poles in human cancer cells treated with the phenanthridine PJ34.

Figure 2

(A) Small aberrant spindles were identified by confocal microscopy in randomly scanned human breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cells incubated with PJ34 (20 μM, 27 h). Spindles were immunolabeled for HSET/kifC1 (green) bound to microtubules. Similarly immunolabeled spindles are not impaired in PJ34 treated normal human breast epithelial cells MCF10A. Bars indicate the spindle length measured by the scale bar (n = 20; 3 different experiments), 95% of the spindles in MDA-MB-231 cells were shorter, 60 ± 5% in size. (B) Upper panel: Impaired spindle poles were identified in randomly scanned fixed MDA-MB-231 cells treated with PJ34 (20 μM, 27 h). Microtubules immunolabeled by α- tubulin (green), centrosomes immunolabeled by γ-tubulin (red) and chromosomes stained by DAPI (blue) are displayed. Lower panel: Spindle poles were not impaired in randomly scanned normal epithelial MCF10A cells treated with PJ34 (20 μM, 27 h). Microtubules identified by immunolabeled HSET14/kifC1 (green), centrosomes immunolabeled for γ-tubulin (red) and chromosomes stained by DAPI (blue) are displayed. The sampled spindles represent 95% of randomly scanned spindles (n = 20) of cancer MDA-MB-231 cells and all the randomly scanned spindles (n = 20) of normal epithelial MCF10A cells in 3 different experiments.