Thymoquinone anticancer activity is enhanced when combined with royal jelly in human breast cancer

Figure 4 Effect of royal jelly, thymoquinone and combinations on caspase 3 cleavage in MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cells. A: Immunofluorescence micrographs of cleaved caspase 3 expression at 24 h after treatment. Red indicates cleaved caspase 3 expression and blue indicates nuclei counter stained by 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole. Arrows indicate apoptotic nuclei. Nuclei were visualized by confocal Zeiss Axio microscope, 40 × oil immersion with scale bar = 50 µmol/L; B: Quantification of cleaved caspase 3 in MDA-MB-231 cells at 24 h of treatment with different concentrations of royal jelly, thymoquinone, and their combinations. Data shown are an average of 3 independent experiments expressed as mean ± standard error of the mean. Asterisks represent statistically significant results, (^aP < 0.05, ^bP < 0.01, ^cP < 0.001). RJ: Royal jelly; TQ: Thymoquinone.