Fig. 2

Knockdown of HSP72 exacerbates CS-induced injury on MLE-12 cells. a Relative protein expression of HSP72 following treatment of HSP72 siRNA normalized to GAPDH was evaluated by immunoblotting; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 compared to cells transfected with si-NC. b MLE-12 cells was transfected with si-HSP72 and stimulated with 5% CSE, and the expression of HSP72 normalized to GAPDH was detected by immunoblotting. CSE was exposed to control and HSP72 knocked down cells. c Cell viability was tested with CCK-8 assay. d Cell apoptosis was tested with flow cytometry. e The release of IL-6, IL-8, and TNF-α was detected by ELISA, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 compared to untreated cells, ^#p < 0.05, ^##p < 0.01, ^###p < 0.001 compared to cells treated with CSE. All experiments were repeated for three times independently and the data were represented as mean ± standard deviation. One-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s test was used for multiple group comparison