Research Paper Volume 10, Issue 1 pp 131—143
Rapamycin prevents the intervertebral disc degeneration via inhibiting differentiation and senescence of annulus fibrosus cells
Figure 6. Protein expression of P16 and P21 in rabbit AFSCs cultured in growth medium with five different conditions for 6 days and tested by western blot. (A) Protein levels for P16, P21 and GAPDH; (B) semi-quantification of P16; (C) semi-quantification of P21. To ensure that equal amount of total protein was loaded, GAPDH (glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase) was used as a loading control for protein normalization. The results indicated that bleomycin increased both P16 and P21 protein expression in AF cells with a concentration-dependent manner. Adding rapamycin in bleomycin treated AF cells decreased P16 and P21 levels in AF cells. *p<0.05 compared to control, #P<0.05 compared to the cells treated with 50 μg/ml of bleomycin.