Fig. 5

Astaxanthin inhibits the signal transduction pathways of STAT3 in SK-N-SH cells and shows a greater effect when combined with si-STAT3. (a) Western blot results. When SK-N-SH cells were treated with astaxanthin, the expressions of Caspase3, Caspase9 and Bax were all upregulated, while the expressions of JAK2, BCL-2, NF-кB and STAT3 were all downregulated. The full blots and additional explanations are shown in the Supplementary File 1. (b) RT-PCR result. The RT-PCR analyses were consistent with the results of the protein experiments