Cell lines

Human gastric cancer–derived epithelial cell lines AGS and KATOIII were purchased from ATCC, where the cell lines had been authenticated by short tandem repeat profiling. Human cancer–derived epithelial cell lines GCIY and NUGC-4 were obtained from Tohoku University Cell Bank, where the cell lines had been authenticated by short tandem repeat analysis. The normal murine gastric epithelial cell line GSM06 was obtained from Riken Cell Bank, where the cell line had been authenticated by simple sequence length polymorphism analysis. Cells were maintained according to the manufacturers’ protocols, and the cell lines were carefully checked for morphologic consistency by microscope. In addition, cultures of the cell lines were checked for mycoplasma contamination using Cycleave PCR Mycoplasma Detection Kit (TaKaRa).