Fig. 5

Effect of eugenol treatment on the expression levels of caspases in MDA-MB-231 and SK-BR-3 cell lines. MDA-MB-231 and SK-BR-3 cells were treated for 48 h with eugenol (4 and 8 μM, and 5 and 10 μM, respectively). The mRNA levels of caspase-3 (a), caspase-7 (c), and caspase-9 (e) genes were quantified by RT-PCR and normalized to GAPDH. Protein expression levels of total and cleaved caspase-3 (b), cleaved caspase-7 (d) and total and cleaved caspase-9 (f) were determined by western blotting. Data are presented as mean ± SD (n = 3). * and # indicate a significant change from untreated, 4, and 5 μM eugenol respectively, at p < 0.05 using ANOVA followed by Tukey–Kramer post-ANOVA test