Fig. 5

NMU receptor activity in colorectal cancer cells. A Ca²⁺  influx after NMU treatment of HCT116 (upper panel) and HT29 (lower panel) cells loaded with fluo-4. Cells were treated with NMU or an NMUR1 (SBL-NMU-21) or NMUR2 (SBL-NMU-17) agonist. The changes in fluorescence were detected and analysed as described in the Methods section. The results are shown as the mean with SD (*p ≤ 0.05; n = 5). B ERK1/2 kinase activation after SBL-NMU-17 NMUR2 agonist treatment of Caco-2 cells was analysed by immunoblotting. The image shows a representative result. The bands were quantified by densitometry. The intensity of the pERK1/2 bands was normalized to those of the respective ERK1/2 and α-tubulin bands. The results are shown as the median with min-to-max range (*p ≤ 0.05; n = 5)