Figure 6. Influence of gold carbene complexes on cancer A2780 cell metabolism.

A2780 cells were treated with Au(NHC) and Au(NHC)₂ for 48 h with their 72 h-exposure IC₅₀-dose (A) Glucose uptake was assessed using 1μCi 2-deoxy-D-2-3H-glucose (1mCi/0.1 mmol) as described, in detail, in Materials and Methods section. (B) Oxygen consumption was measured using a Clark-type O₂ electrode from Hansatech. (C) Western blot analysis of citrate synthase (CS). Representative Immunoblots are shown together with the corresponding Coomassie-stained PVDF membranes. Histogram reports normalized mean relative-integrated-density ± SD values of the CS bands. (D) Lactate amount was detected in one millilitre of medium supernatant using a commercial L-lactic acid Assay Kit (Megazyme). (E) ATP amount was assessed with ATP Determination Kit (Molecular Probes) according to manufacturing instruction. Histograms report the mean values ±SD of at least three independent experiments. The statistical analysis was carried out using one-way ANOVA test followed by Tuckey's multiple comparisons test using Graphpad Prism v 6.0 (^*p<0.05, ^**p<0.01, ^****p<0.0001).