Fig. 6

SGK3 promotes liver CSCs through β-catenin accumulation by GSK3β inactivation. a Levels of β-catenin and active GSK3β (phosphorylated at Ser9)/total GSK3β compared between MHCC97H spheroids and attached cells detected by western blot. β-actin was used as a loading control. b Expression of β-catenin, active GSK3β (phosphorylated at Ser9)/ total GSK3β and SGK3 in Huh7 and MHCC-97H cells stably overexpressing SGK3 or NC detected by western blot. β-actin was used as a loading control. c Expression of β-catenin, active GSK3β (phosphorylated at Ser9)/total GSK3β and SGK3 in Huh7 SGK3 shRNA cells or control cells was detected by western blot. d Treatment of MHCC97H cells with AR-A014418 for 24 h inhibited the expression of CD133, detected by RT-PCR. e MHCC97H-SGK3 or MHCC-97H-NC were treated with 20 μM of GSK3β inhibitor AR-A014418 and subjected to spheroid formation assay (left). The statistical results of the tumour spheroids (> 50 μm) were calculated based on 3 independent experiments (right). Scale bars, 200 μm. All experiments were performed in triplicate, and the results are shown as the mean ± standard deviation. *P < 0.05