Fig. 6

Western blots showing changes in the protein levels of BCL-XL (a & b) and release of cytochrome c (c & d) in the Caco-2 and Ishikawa cells upon treatments at 24 h and the effect of NAC pre-incubation in attenuating theses changes in both cell lines. The columns represent the fold changes of the protein levels normalised against the loading control protein, β-Actin. Data are mean ± SEM (N = 3 separate experiments); p values comparing CDDP/DQA-treated and -untreated cells without NAC pre-incubation were calculated using one-way ANOVA with Tukey multiple comparison post-hoc analysis; ***p < 0.001 and ****p < 0.0001. p values comparing NAC-free and NAC-pre-incubated cells undergone the same CDDP/DQA treatments were calculated using a two-tailed t-test; **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 and ****p < 0.0001. Caspase activity assay showing changes in the caspase-3/7 activity in the Caco-2 (e) and Ishikawa (f) cells upon treatments for 24 h and the effect of NAC pre-incubation in attenuating theses changes in both cell lines. The columns represent the fold changes of the caspase-3/7 activity normalised against the untreated cells. Data are mean ± SEM (N = 2 separate experiments); p values comparing CDDP/DQA-treated and -untreated cells without NAC pre-incubation were calculated using one-way ANOVA with Tukey multiple comparison post-hoc analysis; **p < 0.01 and ***p < 0.001. p values comparing NAC-free and NAC-pre-incubated cells undergone the same CDDP/DQA treatments were calculated using a two-tailed t-test; *p < 0.05 and **p < 0.01