Fig. 4

Inhibition of miR-195-5p/497–5p by NF-κB activation maintained the stemness of CCSCs. a, Quantitation for sphere formation ability manifested with volume of tumor microspheres as detected by sphere formation assay. b, Quantitation for colony formation ability as determined by soft agar colony formation assay. c, The protein expression of stem-like properties-related proteins (CD133 and EpCAM) as detected by Western blot analysis. d, The protein expression of stem cell markers (Nanog, Oct-4 and Sox-2) as determined by Western blot analysis. Measurement data were expressed as mean ± s.d. Data among multiple groups were compared using one-way analysis of variance and then analyzed with Tukey’s post-hoc test. Cell experiment was repeated three times. * p < 0.05 vs. si-NC. # p < 0.05 vs. pcDNA-p65 + miR-NC