Fig. 3

Effects of vemurafenib on the MAPK/ERK pathway activation. A Dot plot showing the dynamic expression changes in the MEK-dependent transcriptional signature [57] in HDF after vemurafenib treatment in comparison to DMSO control. Only genes significantly deregulated (q < 0.1) in at least one of the assessed stimulation time-points (4 h, 8 h and 18 h) are plotted, with the direction of the expression changes indicated by the stroke color (red: up-regulated, blue: down-regulated, n.s.: non-significant) and the fold changes (FC) depicted by the colorimetric scale. B Dot plot of expression changes in two malignant melanoma cell lines (MaMel21 and MaMel63a) for the MEK-dependent transcriptional signature, after 24 h of vemurafenib treatment. Only genes found to be differentially expressed in HDF after stimulation with the drug are also shown for melanoma cells, with the direction of expression changes indicated by the stroke color (red: up-regulated, blue: down-regulated, n.s.: non-significant) and the FC depicted by the colorimetric scale. C Gene set enrichment in HDF for the aforementioned signature for the indicated stimulation time-points. The significance cutoff (q < 0.05) is shown as a dashed red line. D Representative Western blot showing the effect of vemurafenib (PLX) treatment over MEK1/2 and ERK1/2 phosphorylation in HDF. The phosphorylated (p-) and total proteins are shown. GAPDH is included as loading control