Fig. 3

ADMA effect on Tumor Cell Number and Mesenchymal Markers. HC11, EMT6 or 4T1 cells were treated with DPBS (control) or ADMA (5 mM) for 3 days. Cell number was determined by MTS assay. There was a small effect of ADMA on cell growth no matter whether the tumor cells were cultured in regular RPMI 1640 (A) or the arginine- and lysine-free RPMI 1640 medium (B). Similarly, the same small impact of ADMA on stem cell proliferation was observed (C). EMT6 breast cancer cells were used to examine the impact of ADMA on the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT). The mesenchymal related markers, vimentin and snail2, were increased and fibronectin was not affected by ADMA treatment (D). Epithelial mucin-1 was decreased by ADMA treatment (E). Data are presented as individual replicates with the mean ± SD. (*p < 0.05, *** p<0.001, ****p<0.0001), N=8 (A–C) and N=6 (D, E)