Effects of 5-FU, curcumin and the combinational treatment on proliferation-, metastatic gene products and NF-κB expression in the high density tumor microenvironment co-culture.

<p>HCT116 high density mono-cultures were either left untreated (HCT, Co.) or were co-cultured with MRC-5 in monolayer. Tumor microenvironment co-cultures were either left untreated (Co.), treated with curcumin alone (5µM), 5-FU alone (1, 5, and 10µM) or were pretreated for 4 h with curcumin (5µM) followed by treatment with 5-FU (0.1, 1, 2, 3µM). After 10 days of culture, total cell lysates of HCT116 high density cultures were prepared and analyzed by western blotting and quantitative densitometry for MMP-13 (a) and NF-κB (b). Densitometric evaluation of protein expression as revealed by western blot analysis was performed in triplicate. Housekeeping protein β-actin served as a loading control in all experiments. Values were compared to the control and statistically significant values with <i>p</i><0.05. Significant values are marked with (*).