TP421 cytotoxicity is selective for cancer cells.

(A) Growth of normal HFF-1 cells is unaffected while the pancreatic cancer MIA PaCa-2 cells show extensive death following 72 h exposure to escalating doses of TP421. (B) TP421 induces greater cell death in three pancreatic cancer cell lines as compared to HFF-1 cells as measured by trypan blue exclusion. (C) Proliferation of MIA PaCa-2 but not HFF-1 is greatly inhibited by TP421 in the alamar blue assay. Three independent experiments were conducted, representative images are shown in (A), mean ± SD are plotted in (B) and (C). *, **, *** and **** indicate p-value <0.05, p<0.01, p<0.001 and p<0.00005 respectively.