Pemetrexed activates casp9 and PARP in human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cells. (A) Eca-109 and (B) EC9706 cells were treated with 0, 2.5, 5 or 10 µM pemetrexed and incubated for 36 h. Following treatment, the protein levels of the cells were measured via western blot analysis. All data are presented as the mean ± standard deviation. *P<0.05, **P<0.01, ***P<0.001. Casp, caspase; PARP, poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase; NS, not significant.