PAR₁ agonists enhance Met-5A and NCI-H28 cell proliferation.

Met-5A and NCI-H28 cells were serum and growth factor starved for 18 h and then treated with different concentrations of agonists for 72 h. Cell proliferation was measured using a mitochondrial activity assay (WST-1). The optical density values of vehicle treated Met-5A and NCI-H28 cells (Ctrls) were 0.210±0.03 and 0.232±0.04 (n = 6; ns by Student’s t test), respectively. A, thrombin-induced cell proliferation (n = 6); B, non-selective PAR₁-AP-induced cell proliferation (n = 6); C, selective PAR₁-AP-induced cell proliferation (n = 3). Data shown are mean ± SEM of at least three independent experiments performed in triplicate. The differences in proliferation between Ctrl and agonist-treated cells were significant (*P≤0.05, **P≤0.01, ***P≤0.001) by one-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni’s multiple comparison test.