Fig. 1From: Icaritin promotes apoptosis and inhibits proliferation by down-regulating AFP gene expression in hepatocellular carcinomaIcaritin inhibited AFP at the transcription level in hepatoma cells. The expression of AFP gene was detected in HepG2 and SMMC7721 cells treated with icaritin at different concentrations. a Icaritin inhibited AFP expression at protein level. The protein expression of AFP and GAPDH (as a control) was measured by western blot in HepG2 and SMMC7721 cells treated with icaritin at different concentrations for 20 h. b The mRNA expression of AFP was measured by qRT-PCR in HepG2 and SMMC7721 cells treated with icaritin. Results are representative of three independent experiments, and values are the mean ± S.E. *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01. The full-length images for blots in Fig. 1a were presented in Supplementary Fig. 4Back to article page