Modulation of Autophagy in Gastric Cancer Cells by H. pylori

The human gastric cancer cell line AGS was purchased from American Type Culture Collection (ATCC; Manassas, VA, USA) and cultured in RPMI 1640 medium (Gibco, New York, NY, USA, #11,765–054) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS; Gibco, #10,099–141) in a humidified incubator (5% CO₂) at 37 °C. Rapamycin (100 nM, Adipogen Life Sciences, Inc., San Diego, USA, #53,123–88-9) was used to induce autophagy, whereas chloroquine (20 µM, Sigma–Aldrich, Ann Arbor, MI, USA) were used to inhibit autophagy.
The wild-type cagA-positive H. pylori strain, NCTC11637 (Hp-WT, ATCC), and the cagA-knockout H. pylori strain with NCTC11637 background (Hp-ΔcagA) that were kindly provided by Dr. Sasakawa [14 (link), 15 (link)] were cultured on trypticase soy agar plates (Becton Dickinson, San Diego, CA, USA) in a humidified incubator (5% CO₂) at 37 °C.