Fig. 1

Expression profile of the PKC isotypes and NF-κB p65 subunit in bladder cancer cell lines and tissue specimens. a The expression profile of nine PKC isotypes in four bladder urothelial cancer cell lines was measured by real-time PCR. The expression levels were normalized to β-actin. The statistical analysis results are as follows. RT4 cell line (left upper panel): PKCδ, PKCι, PKCβ, PKCη vs PKCα: p < 0.01**; PKCζ vs PKCα: not significant. 5637 cell line (right upper panel): PKCδ, PKCι, PKCζ vs PKCα: p < 0.01**. T24 cell line (left lower panel): PKCδ vs PKCα: p < 0.01**; PKCα vs PKCι, PKCζ: p < 0.05*. TCC-SUP cell line (right lower panel): PKCα vs PKCι: not significant; PKCα vs PKCδ: p < 0.01**. b Protein expression of PKCα in seven bladder cancer cell lines was detected by western blot. The gels were run under the same experimental conditions. The band intensities were calculated using the ImageJ 1.46r software. β-Tubulin was used as an internal control for total protein measurements, and Histone was used as a nucleoprotein reference. The ratio of the target gene to β-Tubulin/Histone was used to conduct the statistical analysis. *P < 0.05 and **P < 0.01, as determined by Student’s T-test. c PKCα and NF-κB p65 expression were associated with tumor progression in 30 clinical bladder cancer specimens. Two representative cases are shown. The gene expression level was evaluated in three random visual fields. Original magnifications: 200× and 400×. The gene expression of PKCα and NF-κB p65 between tumor tissue samples staged as pT1 and pT4 was compared d and a Pearson’s correlation coefficient analysis was performed to analyze the expression correlation between the two genes