Fig. 1
Muscone shows protective effects against inflammatory irritation in NP cells. (A) Chem-ical structure of muscone. (B) CCK-8 cell viability assay of different concentrations of muscone on NP cells. (C) Cell proliferation assay of muscone on NP cells were measured by CCK-8. (D) qPCR analysis showing the relative mRNA level of ACAN, COL2 and CHSY1 expression under different concentrations of muscone treatment groups. (E) qPCR analysis showing the relative mRNA level of MMP1, MMP3, MMP13, ADAMTS4 and ADAMTS5 expression under different concentrations of muscone treatment groups. (F) The protein levels of MMP1, MMP3, MMP13, ADAMTS4, ACAN, CHSY1 and GAPDH expression in different treatment groups were assessed by Western Blot and (G) further quantified by comparing the gray scale to GAPDH expression. (H) Representative mi-croscopy images of Transwell invasion assay of NP cells in different treatment groups were shown in the left panel, migrated cells were stained with crystal purple and were calculated and shown in the right panel. Blank was used as control. All experiments were repeated at least 3 times, and GAPDH was used as an internal control for qPCR. Data are shown as mean ± SD. ##, P < 0.01.*, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.01. ##represented vs. Blank group, **represented vs. IL-1β treatment group.
