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. 2017 May 12;18(5):1048. doi: 10.3390/ijms18051048

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© 2017 by the authors.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Combination treatment of valproic acid (VPA) and doxorubicin (DOX) synergistically augmented the autophagy of HepG2 cells. (A) Acridine orange (AO) staining was used to detect acidic vesicles in HepG2 cells at the indicated concentration of VPA and DOX monotherapies and combination treatment after incubation for 48 h. Images were taken using fluorescence inverted microscopy. Red color represents acidic vesicle and green color represents non-acidic vesicle. Scale bar represents 200 μm; (B) The viability of HepG2 cells was analyzed after 48-h incubation in the indicated experimental condition by using EZ-Cytox assay; (C) Percentages (%) of AO-positive cells were counted in different fields (containing at least 40 cells per field); (D) LC3 I and II protein levels were analyzed using Western blotting. Actin was used as the loading control. The intensity of LC3B-II bands was quantified by scanning densitometry program ImageJ and normalized to that of actin (right panel). Three independent experiments were performed and results reported as the mean ± standard deviation (SD). ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 compared with the control group.