Protective Effects of Liposomal N-Acetylcysteine against Paraquat-Induced Cytotoxicity and Gene Expression
Figure 3
Effect of NAC or L-NAC pretreatment on intracellular levels of GSH (a), PQ (b), and ROS (c) in PQ-challenged cells. Cells pretreated for 4 h with control media (No Pretreatment) or 5.0 mM NAC- (NAC Pretreatment) or L-NAC-containing media (L-NAC Pretreatment) were challenged with increasing PQ concentrations (0, 0.1, 0.5, 1.0, and 5.0 mM) for 24 h. Cells were harvested and lysed for concomitant measurement of intracellular GSH content (a) and PQ uptake (b) via UPLC analysis and normalized to total protein. For the measurement of ROS, cells were stained for 30 min posttreatment with the cell permeable CM-H2DCFDA fluorescent dye specific for oxidative species. Adherent cells were scraped and analyzed flow cytometrically using the FL1-H channel. Bars represent mean ± S.E.M. of 3 independent experiments. *denotes significant difference relative to cells with no pretreatment .
