Fig. 1

Proliferation studies and Western-blot analysis of ICC cell lines. A Effects of AKT inhibitor MK-2206 on HUH28 (a), RBE (b), and SSP25 (c) after 0, 24, 48, 72 and 96 h (h). 0 h values were set to 100%. Concentrations of MK-2206 are indicated. Shown are the mean values of n = 3–5 independent experiments with each 6–8 replicates. Controls were treated with solvent (DMSO). Significance was tested by one-way ANOVA between the control and treatment groups. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 with 95% level of confidence. B Cropped Western blot images of 25 µM MK-2206-treated HUH28 and RBE and SSP25 with specific antibodies against total AKT and p-AKT, mTOR and p-mTOR, ERK1/2 and p-ERK1/2 after 3, 8 and 24 h. The samples were derived from the same experiment and the blots were processed parallelly. α-Tubulin was used as loading control. Note reduced phosphorylation of AKT and mTOR and increase in p-ERK1/2, in addition to death of HUH28 cells after 8 h and 24 h of MK-2206