Fig. 7

Consequences of autophagy blockage on MPA-treated DMSC. Cells plated the day before were exposed to 60 µM chloroquine (CQ) for 3 h. After CQ withdrawn, cells were treated with MPA for 72 h, and then the cells were harvested, counted and analyzed by flow cytometry. a MPA treatment after pretreatment with CQ significantly reduced the amount of harvested cells (*P ≥ 0.05). b Pretreatment with CQ induces morphological changes in MPA-treated DMSC. A smaller cell size (low FSC) with enlarged intracellular granularity (high SSC) is suggestive of early apoptotic events. c Annexin V staining reveals a significantly increase of the number of early apoptotic cells in MPA-treated cells when autophagy is impaired by CQ pretreatment (*P ≥ 0.05). These experiments were done in triplicate