Stemness signatures reflect prognostic disturbances in gastric cancer

Figure 4 Impact of Niemann-Pick type C2 on the biological characteristics of gastric cancer cells. A: Western Blot analysis demonstrates that siRNA sequence Si-2 substantially reduced Niemann-Pick type C2 (NPC2) protein levels; B: Reduction in cell proliferation observed in AGS and HGC27 cell lines following NPC2 knockdown; C: Decrease in colony formation by AGS and HGC27 cells after NPC2 knockdown, indicating reduced clonogenic potential; D: Transwell invasion assays demonstrating that siNPC2-treated AGS and HGC27 cells exhibited reduction in migrated and invaded cell numbers compared to the NC. Scale bar: 200 μm; E: Spheroidization experiments showing a decrease in spheroid diameter and impaired spheroidization ability in AGS and HGC-27 cells following NPC2 knockdown; F: Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction profiling of stemness markers (SOX2, OCT4, CD133, NANOG) showing significant transcriptional downregulation in NPC2-depleted cells; G: Immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis of NPC2 expression in gastric cancer (GC) tissues and adjacent non-cancerous tissues. A statistical representation of IHC results, summarizing NPC2 expression across different patient groups; H and I: NPC2-associated drug resistance in GC treatment was analyzed using Beyondcell.