Figure 7.

Piperlongumine (PL) induced cellular apoptosis through the Akt signaling pathway. KMH-2 cells were used to verify the involvement of the Akt signaling pathway in PL-caused apoptosis. (A) KMH-2 cells were transfected with or without constitutively active Akt construct, and the expression and the activation of Akt, caspase-3, and PARP were investigated by western blots after incubation with PL for 24 h. (B) Cellular apoptosis was investigated by flow cytometry. pBSSK⁺ was used as a negative control of transfection. pmAKT was a constitutively active form of the ATK construct. DMSO was used as a negative control. GAPDH was used as a loading control. Three independent experiments each for western blotting and flow cytometry were conducted, and the western blots and flow cytometry dot plots of a representative experiment are shown. * indicates p < 0.05.