Research Paper Volume 16, Issue 4 pp 3955—3972

Figure 5. Triptolide-activated PI3K/Akt/Nrf2 signaling pathway is helpful to the activation of antioxidant stress in SI-treated RPE cells. Expression levels of p-PI3K/PI3K p-Akt/Akt, p-Nrf2/Nrf2, HO-1 and NQO1 relative proteins in ARPE-19 cells. The cells were incubated with LY294002 (10 μM) (A) or ML385 (1 μM) (B) for 1 h after pretreatment with TP (20 nM) for 6 h, then exposed to SI (10 mM) for 24 h. Quantitative analyses by ImageJ software (n = 3). (C) Immunofluorescence staining of p-PI3K, p-Akt, p-Nrf2 and HO-1 in ARPE-19 cells. Bar = 200 μm. Data are shown as mean ± standard deviation (SD) (n = 3); ^*p < 0.05, ^**P < 0.01 compared with the control group; ^#P < 0.05, ^##P < 0.01 compared with the SI group; ^&&P < 0.01 compared with the SI+TP group.