Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma Cell Lines

The human ESCC cell lines TE-1 was purchased from the Cell Bank of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Shanghai, China), and TE-10, KYSE-150, and ECA-109 cells were a gift from Dr. Ye Hua of the Clinical Medicine College at Jiangsu University. The human esophageal epithelial cell line, Het-1A, was purchased from Jennio Biological Technology (Guangzhou, China). Cells were respectively maintained in RPMI 1640 or DMEM (Gibco, Carlsbad, CA, USA) containing 10% fetal bovine serum (HyClone, Logan, UT, USA) and cultured at 37 °C in 5% CO₂. IL-23, anti-IL-23, and anti-IL-23R were purchased from R&D Systems (Minneapolis, MN, USA), and WHI-P154, DAPT, and ICG-001 were purchased from Selleck Chemicals Inc. (Houston, TX, USA). For RNA interference, cells were transfected with siRNA oligos (Gene Pharma, Shanghai, China) against human β-catenin and Notch1 using Lipofectamine 2000 (Invitrogen, San Diego, CA, USA). The following siRNA sequences (GenePharma, Shanghai, China) were used: siRNA-β-catenin: sense, 5′-GUCCUGUAUGAGUGGGAACTT-3′; antisense, 5′-GUUCCCACUCAUACAGGACTT-3′. siRNA-Notch1: sense, 5′-GGGCUAACAAAGAUAUGCATT-3′; antisense, 5′-UGCAUAUCUUUGUUAGCCCTT-3′. Negative controls using non-transfected cells and empty vector-transfected cells were performed in parallel. The colony formation assay and soft agar assay were described previously [22 (link)].