Figure 3
CoCl 2 -induced HIF-1α stabilization promotes SNAI1 expression, EMT and invasion capacity of HCC cells. (A) mRNA expression level of E-cadherin, N-cadherin, Vimentin, HIF-1α and SNAI1 was determined in SMMC-7721 cells with and without CoCl2 exposure (100 μM) by qPCR. GAPDH was used as endogenous control and mRNA level of untreated SMMC-7721cells was used as control. Data were shown as mean ± SD of three independent experiments. (B) Protein expression of E-cadherin, N-cadherin, Vimentin, HIF-1α and SNAI1 in SMMC-7721 cells with or without CoCl2 treatment (100 μM) was determined by immunoblotting. β-actin was used as endogenous reference. (C) The numbers of invasive and migrating SMMC-7721 cells with and without CoCl2 exposure (100 μM) was calculated with crystal violet staining. The average numbers of ten random microscopic fields (×400) was recorded in each experiment. Data was shown as mean ± SD of three independent experiments. Representative images of each group were shown.