Fig. 4

Artesunate induces activation of the UPR/ER stress pathway. Gene expression analysis was performed on BL-41, Oci-Ly-2 and SU-DHL-4 cells treated with artesunate (5 μM, 12 h). a 131 up or downregulated common genes were detected across all three cell lines upon artesunate treatment. Genes are plotted from smallest to largest on a log fold change scale ((< 0.5, > − 0.5) and adjusted p value < 0.01) according to the gene expression in BL-41 (gray bars). The p-values were calculated in IPA using Fisher right-tailed exact test. b The UPR was identified as the top pathway affected by artesunate by IPA analysis of the combined list of significantly changed genes in the three cell lines. c The top significant network in the analysis of the combined list of the three cell lines identified MYC as a central molecule. The signaling pathway and network of the differentially expressed genes are shown with upregulated genes (red) and downregulated genes (green). Where two or more genes were present, the lowest absolute value was chosen