Fig. 1: Bone marrow-derived MSC effects on prostate cancer cells.

a Representative images (n ≥ 3 biologically independent samples) of α-Smooth muscle actin (SMA) staining of human and rodent bone metastatic prostate cancer. b MSC migration to prostate cancer cell conditioned media. Number of hematoxylin and eosin stained MSCs per filter (MC No./Filter; n = 3 fields of view from n = 3 biologically independent samples) were counted after 6 h of incubation. Representative photomicrographs of fields of view are shown. c Direct co-culture of MSCs and PAIII prostate cancer cells at various ratios of PAIII:MSC. Values calculated as percentage of respective PAIII controls seeded at the same density (% Control). Growth was determined by luminescence assay and relative light unit (RLU) measurement. d MSC conditioned media (CM) treatment of PAIII at varying ratios. Final concentration of serum was 10% for each condition. e Cleaved caspase-3 (arrow head) in PAIII cells treated for 6 h with MSC CM (50% ratio). Arrow indicates full-length caspase-3. Etoposide (ETX; 50 μM) was used as a positive control. These experiments were repeated twice with similar results. f MSC CM (50%) effects on prostate cancer cell line growth, relative to untreated controls. Growth measurements were performed by MTT or luminescence assay. g PAIII treated with MSC or osteoblast (MC3T3) CM. h Prostate epithelial cells (PREC) treated with MSC CM. MTT absorbance (ABS) was used as a readout for cell growth. Statistical analyses used include unpaired t-test (c, d and f–h) and ANOVA with multiple comparisons at 95% CI (b–d and f, g) with error bars representing the mean ± SD. All experiments were independently repeated (n = 3). Asterisks denotes statistical significance (*p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001, ****p ≤ 0.0001) while NS denotes not significant.