Fig. 6.

Pharmacological inhibition of apoptosis signal-regulating kinase-1 (ASK1) reduced inflammasome activity in MH-S cells. MH-S cells were treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) for 1 h followed by ATP for 30 min in the presence or absence of the ASK1 inhibitor NQDI1, and cell lysates were collected. A: representative Western blots of pro-IL-1β, IL-1β, procaspase-1, and cleaved caspase-1-p20. GAPDH was used as a loading control. Nigericin treatment was used as a positive control. Each protein indicated was immunoblotted separately, and each set of bands for a given protein was cropped from the same blot. Unrelated lanes were removed for clarity. Densitometry analysis of pro-IL-1β (B), IL-1β (C), procaspase-1 (D), and cleaved caspase-1-p20 (E) expression is shown. Densitometry values were first normalized to GAPDH and then to the level of the corresponding protein for nigericin-treated cells. *Significant difference compared with wild type (P < 0.05; n = 3–6).