MOESM3 of Inhibition of endoplasmic-reticulum-stress-mediated autophagy enhances the effectiveness of chemotherapeutics on pancreatic cancer

Additional file 3: Figure S3. IHC staining with anti-active Casp3 showing differentially increased apoptosis in the pancreas of drug treated orthotopic murine model: The murine PDAC tissue from the control group shows the lowest proportion of active Casp3 positive cells (arrow) in the pancreatic tissue. Both the Sun+CQ, and Chemo+CQ doublet treatment and the Chemo+Sun+CQ triplet treatments robustly increases the apoptotic cells in the ductal carcinoma region (p = 0.037, 0.004, 0.0006, respectively). As shown in the bar-chart, neither sunitinib alone, nor chemo alone could alter apoptosis significantly (p = 0.089, 0.12 and 0.071, respectively). However, there was a statistically significant increase of active Casp3 positive cells in the triplet treatment group when compared to all of the double treatment groups of Chemo+Sun (p = 0.0007), Chemo+CQ (p = 0.008) and Sun+CQ (p = 0.019). Sham vehicle control, Chemo gemcitabine plus paclitaxel, Sun sunitinib, CQ Chloroquine. *: p < 0.05, **: p < 0.01. Scale bar: 10 µm