Cell death induction by SecTRAPs is prevented by caspase-2 and caspase-3/7 inhibitors.

<p>(<i>A</i>) shows that the cell death provoked by SecTRAPs is significantly decreased upon preincubation of either A549 or HeLa cells for 30 min with 100 µM of the general caspase inhibitor zVAD before the SecTRAP treatment (**, p<0.01; ***, p<0.001). In (<i>B</i>) HeLa or A549 cells were incubated 30 min with 25 µM of inhibitors for caspase-2 (zVDVAD-fmk), caspase-3 (zDEVD-fmk) or caspase-8 (zIETD-fmk) before SecTRAP treatment. In all of these cases a significantly lower cell death was observed, as indicated in the figure, suggesting that the three caspases may be involved in propagating the cell death triggered by SecTRAPs, as further discussed in the text (*, p<0.05; **, p<0.01; ***, p<0.001).