Docetaxel

Chemotherapeutic agents, such as cisplatin (Accord Healthcare, Milan, Italy), paclitaxel (Accord Healthcare, Milan, Italy), and docetaxel (Hospira, Naples, Italy), were dissolved in 0.9% NaCl and added to the culture medium at the concentrations indicated in Table 1. Curcumin from Curcuma longa (≥95% purity), was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA). A 10 mM stock solution was prepared in dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO, MP Biomedicals, Santa Ana, CA, USA) and stored at +4 °C.

The NSCLC cell lines A549, H460, H1703, and H358 were obtained directly from Dr. John Minna's laboratory (Dallas, TX) and maintained at 37°C and 5% CO₂ in RPMI 1640 (Gibco) supplemented with 2 mM L-glutamine (Gibco) and 10% fetal bovine serum (Gibco). Human Bronchial Epithelial Cells (Cell Applications) were maintained in Bronchial/Tracheal Epithelial Growth Medium (Cell Applications) at 37°C and 5% CO₂. HBEpC cells beyond passage 3 were not used for experiments. PAPSS1 (1:1000) primary antibody was obtained from Abcam while β-Actin (1:50000), cleaved caspase-3 (1:1000), Cyclin A2 (1:2000), Cyclin E1 (1:1000), and cleaved PARP (1:1000) primary antibodies were purchased from Cell Signaling Technology. The chemotherapeutics cisplatin, carboplatin, irinotecan, topotecan, and docetaxel were obtained as ready-to-inject solutions from Hospira. Epirubicin and doxorubicin were obtained from Pfizer while oxaliplatin and mitomycin C were purchased from Sanofi Aventis and Novopharm respectively.