Iguratimod Inhibits the Aggressiveness of Rheumatoid Fibroblast-Like Synoviocytes

Figure 5

Iguratimod promoted apoptosis of RA-FLSs. (a) RA-FLSs were treated with TNF-α (25 ng/ml) and different concentrations of iguratimod for 24 h. Propidium iodide (PI) and Annexin V (AV) staining were determined by flow cytometry. Typical flow plots were shown. (b, c) The summary data of early apoptotic cells (PI^-AV⁺) and late apoptotic or dead cells (PI⁺AV⁺) were shown. The data were described as the for three independent experiments (totally 8 RA-FLSs lines). (d, e) Caspase 3 and cFLIP mRNA expression were measured by qPCR in RA-FLSs. (f) For inhibitor experiments, cells were pretreated with the pan-caspase inhibitor z-VAD-fmk (Sigma-Aldrich, 10 μM) or N-acetyl-l-cysteine (NAC, Sigma-Aldrich, 5 mM) for 1 h before the treatment of iguratimod. RA-FLSs were treated with TNF-α (25 ng/ml) and iguratimod (0.5 μg/ml) for 24 h. Apoptosis was determined by flow cytometry. Typical flow plots were shown. The data were shown as the for three independent experiments. The data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA followed by Turkey’s test. , , versus the DMSO or control group.

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