Fig. 3

Pharmacological treatment of GICs with HI-TOPK-032 depleted PBK, and reduced their viability and sphere forming capacity. a HI-TOPK-032 treated cells exhibited significant decrease in viability. b, c Sphere formation capacity - Sphere number and sphere area of the PBK treated cells were also evaluated as compared to the untreated cells. PBK inhibition led to an efficient decrease in the sphere formation capacity of GICs. d Induction of cell death in HI-TOPK-032 treated cells as compared to untreated ones was significant in all cases (e) Western blot showing Total and Phospho ERK in two GIC cultures treated with HI-TOPK-032 versus untreated cultures. f Western blot showing phosphorylation status of the p38 MAP kinase (Thr180/Tyr182) in three GIC cultures treated with HI-TOPK-032 versus untreated cultures. The relative expression values were calculated by normalization to ACTB expression and using untreated cultures as references. Error bars = SD; n = 5. Asterisks correspond to p values and indicate level of significance: * = (p ≈ 0.01-0.05), ** = (p ≈ 0.001-0.01) and **** = (p < 0.0001)