Figure 1.

Effect of vincristine and sildenafil on cell morphology, apoptosis, and mitotic index in PC-3 cells. The cells were incubated in the absence or presence of the indicated agent for 24 h (A,C–E) or 48 h (B). The cell morphology was observed under microscopic examination (A), or the cells were harvested for propidium iodide staining to analyze the distribution of cell populations at sub-G1 (apoptosis) phase using FACScan flow cytometric analysis (B), or the cell apoptosis was examined through measuring the level of nucleosomal DNA fragments (C). The confocal immunofluorescence examination was performed to detect microtubule (green) and chromosome (blue) using β-tubulin antibody and DAPI (D), and the quantitative mitotic index was obtained accordingly (E). Data are expressed as mean ± SEM of three to nine independent determinations. ^*P < 0.05, ^**P < 0.01, and ^***P < 0.001 compared with vincristine alone.