Fig. 7

Detection of cleaved endogenous E-cad coincides with NE in human diseased lungs. Equal protein aliquots (in 20 μl) of concentrated cell-free BAL derived from patient with COPD exacerbation (n = 5) were subjected to SDS-PAGE and immunoblotting using antibodies raised against human E-cad extracellular domain and NE respectively. a, densitometric analysis found increased level of immunoreactive E-cad fragment (~80 kDa). b, densitometric analysis revealed the presence of immunoreactive NE in the same samples of (a). Experiments were repeated three times with similar results (bars ± SEM; **** corresponds to p < 0.0001 for COPD exacerbation versus control)