Figure 3

Examples of the drug-induced apoptosis of PC-3 cells as assessed by flow cytometry, described in Materials and Methods. Upper panel: Adriamycin (ADRIA: 100 nM) produced clear evidence of apoptosis in PC-3 cell cultures after 96 h of incubation (B). Combination therapy of ADRIA (100 nM) plus 15dPGJ2 (2 µM) did not enhance the adriamycin-induced apoptosis of PC-3 cells (C). However, combination therapy of ADRIA (100 nM) plus rosiglitazone (ROS: 10 µM) increased the number of apoptotic cells of PC-3 cell cultures under identical experimental conditions (D). IGF-1 (25 ng/mL) neutralized partially the adriamycin-induced apoptosis of PC-3 cells (E). This IGF-1 survival factor effect was exerted also on PC-3 cell cultures exposed to the combination treatment of ADRIA (100 nM) plus 15dPGJ2 (2 µM) (F). Contrary to this, IGF-1 lost its ability to inhibit the adriamycin-induced apoptosis of PC-3 cells in cell cultures exposed to combination treatment of ADRIA plus ROS (G). Lower panel: in this panel the apoptosis data are expressed as number of apoptotic cells % compared with the total PC-3 cell number in triplicate experiments. Statistical analysis was performed by Student t test. Values are means ± SD (P< 0.05).