Figure 5.

Thapsigargin treatment during S. aureus infection increases host cell viability whereas the intracellular bacterial load is reduced. HeLa cells and HUVEC were infected with S. aureus USA300-GFP (MOI 100) for 2 and 6 hours in the presence of DMSO (D) or 0.1 µM of Thapsigargin (T). Host cell viability in HeLa (A) and HUVEC (B) was quantified after 6 hours of infection by flow cytometry. Cell viability was normalized by the percentage of uninfected and untreated cells (U). (C) Intracellular MRSA survival was quantified by measuring the percentage of host cells with intracellular S. aureus USA300-GFP after 2 and 6 hours of infection. Data are expressed as means ± standard errors (SE) of at least two different experiments performed in duplicates and Student’s t-tests were performed to validate statistical significance across conditions. p-value ≤ 0.05 (*); ≤0.001 (***).