Journal: Frontiers in Pharmacology
Article Title: Moxibustion combined with chemotherapy inhibits gastric cancer growth by modulating the immunosuppressive microenvironment involving the Treg/IL-10/TGF-β1 axis
doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1688182
Figure Lengend Snippet: Experimental results in mice. (A) Grouped appearance images of nude mice, showing the general conditions of the model group, moxibustion group, chemotherapy group, and moxibustion combined with chemotherapy group. (B) Gross specimens of tumor tissues from each group of nude mice, comparing the size and shape differences of tumors in each group through a ruler. The two sub-figures have visual proportion differences due to different shooting distances; the actual size should be based on the scale and quantitative data. (C) The changes in tumor volume of each group of mice. The horizontal axis represents the number of days of observation after mouse modeling, and the vertical axis indicates the size of the tumor volume. The expression differences began to be shown from the 12th day as illustrated in the figure. The significant differences between groups are indicated by the letter method. If the letters are the same, it means there is no statistical difference between the two groups; otherwise, there is a difference (p < 0.05). (A) compared with the model group; (B) compared with the moxibustion group; (C) compared with the chemotherapy group. Model group: 32.01 ± 5.49 mm 3 , 92.19 ± 20.40 mm 3 , 157.30 ± 28.79 mm 3 , 276.10 ± 76.86 mm 3 . Moxibustion group: 32.96 ± 2.93 mm 3 , 51.29 ± 12.55 mm 3 , 85.08 ± 17.83 mm 3 , 182.55 ± 15.40 mm 3 . Chemotherapy group: 30.36 ± 7.72 mm 3 , 37.97 ± 15.11 mm 3 , 68.57 ± 15.09 mm 3 , 123.15 ± 36.76 mm 3 . Moxibustion combined with chemotherapy group: 26.39 ± 10.52 mm 3 , 31.50 ± 8.50 mm 3 , 43.53 ± 14.24 mm 3 , 64.09 ± 17.86 mm 3 . There were significant differences in tumor volume among the groups of mice (overall between-group effect: F (3,20) = 90.502, p < 0.001, partial η 2 = 0.931). Post hoc comparisons, with the moxibustion plus chemotherapy group as the reference, showed that on the ninth day, the tumor volume of the model group and the moxibustion group was significantly larger than that of the moxibustion plus chemotherapy group (both p < 0.05); by the 12th day, the tumor volume of the chemotherapy group was also significantly larger than that of the moxibustion plus chemotherapy group (p = 0.041); on the 15th day, the tumor volume of all single-treatment groups was extremely significantly larger than that of the moxibustion plus chemotherapy group (model group vs. combined group: p < 0.001; moxibustion group vs. combined group: p < 0.001; chemotherapy group vs. combined group: p = 0.031). (D) HE staining pathological sections of tumor tissues from each group (upper: low-power field; lower: high-power field of the selected area). (E) Protein expression of FOXP3 and TGF-β1 in tumor tissues. (a) Protein molecular weight standard. (b) Representative results of three independent repeated experiments detected by Western blot. The letters A-E above the bands represent the blank control group, model group, moxibustion group, chemotherapy group, and combined treatment group, respectively. (c–d) Semi-quantitative statistical analysis of FOXP3 (c) and TGF-β1 (d) protein expression. The data were calculated by the ratio of the gray value of the target protein to GAPDH and expressed as mean ± standard deviation. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 (α = 0.05).
Article Snippet: The primary antibodies and their dilution ratios were as follows: rabbit polyclonal antibody against Foxp3 (Bioss, cat. Bs-23074R, lot: AF03154485), diluted 1:1,000; rabbit polyclonal antibody against TGF-β1 (Bioss, cat. Bs-0086R, lot: AG19301,531), diluted 1:2000; mouse monoclonal antibody against GAPDH (Zhongshan Jinqiao, cat. TA-08, lot: 230040220), diluted 1:2000.
Techniques: Expressing, Staining, Molecular Weight, Western Blot, Control, Standard Deviation
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