Fig. 5

Involvement of mitochondrial metabolism in the expression of IL-1RA-associated cancer stemness markers. A PCR array was applied to screen a set of cancer stem cell-related genes in HSC-3 cells with knockdown of IL-1RA, in which the expression of each gene was quantitated relative to that in control cells (dashed line). B–C Four candidates (SOX2, THY1, EGF, and KIT), as indicated by the solid rectangle in (A), were further examined by Western blot for their protein expression in HSC-3 and Ca9-22 cells with knockdown of IL-1RA in (B), and OECM-1 cells with overexpression of IL-1RA in (C), along with the control cells. D Protein expression of SOX2 in OECM-1 cells with overexpression of IL-1RA and control cells was examined by Western blot in the presence or absence of rotenone or antimycin A. Data were presented as mean ± SD from three independent experiments in (B–D). *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01; ***, p < 0.001. Rot., rotenone; Ant. A, antimycin A; shLuc, knockdown of firefly luciferase; shIL-1RA, knockdown of IL-1RA; EV, empty vector; IL-1RA-OE, overexpression of IL-1RA