Figure 1

Conditioned medium from the culture of inflammatory cytokine-stimulated MSCs enhanced chemoresistance of HCC cells in vitro. (A) SMMC-7721 cells were treated with cisplatin (20 μM) with conditioned medium collected from MSCs which were pretreated with inflammatory cytokines or not. The morphology of the cells was captured by microscope. MTT was employed to examine the proliferation of SMMC-7721 cells, which were treated with cisplatin (20 μM) (B) or epirubicin (0.55 μg/ml) (C) with conditioned medium collected from MSCs which were pretreated with inflammatory cytokines or not. (D) SMMC-7721 cells were cultured in a 6-well plate with an existence of cisplatin (20 μM) and the conditioned medium collected from MSCs which were pretreated with inflammatory cytokines or not were added in SMMC-7721 culture medium for 24 hours. PI/Annexin V-FITC assay was used to measure apoptotic SMMC-7721 cells by flow cytometry. MTT was employed to examine the proliferation of HepG2 cells, which were treated with cisplatin (20 μM) (E) or epirubicin (0.55 μg/ml) (F) with conditioned medium collected from MSCs which were pretreated with inflammatory cytokines or not. (*Compared with the group that untreated with chemotherapy drugs P < 0.05; #Compared with the group that treated with the conditioned medium collected from MSCs which were pretreated with inflammatory cytokines or not P < 0.05).