Fig. 3

Soluble Gal-8S promotes cell growth and its partial silencing reduces proliferation of U87 cells. a Cell growth under Gal-8 treatment. U87 cells were seeded on plastic plates, treated with soluble Gal-8S (50 μg/ml) for 24 h in the presence or absence of 20 mM lactose and a crystal violet assay was performed in triplicate. Gal-8 increased cell growth (*p < 0.0001) except when co-incubated with lactose, indicating a glycan interaction-mediated effect. b Effect of Gal-8 silencing on cell growth. U87 cells transduced with shGal-8#5 or irrelevant shRNA (shC) lentiviral particles were cultivated for 1 week, seeded (100,000 viable cells per well) for 48 h and viable cells were counted after trypan blue staining. Graph represents the percentage of cell number increment in two independent experiments in triplicate (*p < 0.01). c Effect of Gal-8 silencing on proliferation. Transduced U87 cells were stained with CFSE and fluorescence dilution, reflecting cell proliferation, was analyzed after 24 h by flow cytometry. A representative histogram shows a lower decrease of CFSE fluorescence in shGal-8#5 versus control shC-transduced U87 cells. The graph represents the quantification of CFSE median fluorescence index of three independent experiments. (*p < 0.05)