Fig. 2

CSR induced apoptosis in IL-6/sIL-6R-stimulated RA-FLS. (a) Representative flow cytometric scatter graphs are shown in the left panel. Apoptotic cell percentages are shown in the right panel. (b) Immunoblotting analyses of cleaved caspase-3 and cleaved caspase-9 are shown. RA-FLS were incubated with indicated concentrations of CSR for 1 h and then stimulated with IL-6/sIL-6R (100 ng/ml each) for 24 h. GAPDH served as the loading control. Representative immunoblotting results (the left panel) and quantitative results (the right panel) are shown. Each membrane was cut based on molecular weights of proteins to be examined before hybridisation with primary antibodies. Original images of all blots are presented in Additional file 3. Data are expressed as mean ± SD of 3 independent experiments. * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01 vs. IL-6/sIL-6R plus CSR solvent-treated group