Fig. 5

Effects of PRKCA knockdown in two MEKi-Re LGSC cell lines using lentiviral shRNA. a Determination of PKC-alpha (PKC-α) protein expression by WB. Transduction with lentiviral particles containing PRKCA shRNA resulted in a complete PKC-α protein knockdown in VOA-6406 cells and a partial knockdown in VOA-3723 cells. As detected by WES, VOA-3723 cells display PRCKA CN gain, which may explain the partial PKC-α protein knockdown. b Effects of PRKCA knockdown on cell proliferation. Reduction of PKC-α levels alone did not compromise cell proliferation in either of the two cell lines tested. Furthermore, PRKCA knockdown in combination with selumetinib treatment did not seem to significantly increase the sensitivity of these lines to selumetinib treatment. c Effects of PRKCA knockdown on cell viability (MTS and CV assays). As seen in these bar graphs, and similar to what we observed in the proliferation experiments, PRKCA knockdown did not seem to impact the viability of these lines