Fig. 6: MTCH2 silencing provokes apoptosis activation in primary human CRPC cells.

The primary pPC-1 cells were subjected to individual treatments with specific MTCH2 shRNAs (shMTCH2-S1, shMTCH2-S2, or shMTCH2-S3, each representing a unique sequence) or a control scramble non-sense shRNA (c-sh), stable cells were formed after puromycin selection. Equal cell numbers were cultured for designated time periods, the Caspase-3 activity (A), the Caspase-9 activity (B), expression levels of apoptosis-related proteins (C), and the Histone-DNA contents (D) were tested, with cell apoptosis measured via the nuclear TUNEL staining (E) and the Annexin V FACS (F) assays. Additionally, stable cells derived from other primary CRPC cells (pPC-2, pPC-3, and pPC-4), as well as the primary human prostate epithelial cells (pEpi1 and pEpi2) expressing either c-sh or shMTCH2-S1, were established and the equal number of cells were cultured for the designated time periods, the Caspase-3 activity (G, I) and cell apoptosis (elevated via the nuclear TUNEL staining, H, J) were tested similarly. The data are expressed as mean ± standard deviation (SD, n = 5). “Ctrl” denotes the parental control cells. Statistical significance is marked by *P < 0.05 when compared to “c-sh” cells. “n.s.” denotes non-statistically significant differences (P > 0.05). The experiments depicted in this figure were conducted five times (biological replicates), consistently producing similar results. The scale bar represents 100 μm.