Cell culture and transfection

The human SK-Hep1 HCC cell line and the prostate cancer 22Rv1 cell line were obtained from the American Type Culture Collection (Manassas, VA, USA), and the Huh7 HCC line (originally from the Japanese Collection of Research Bioresources Cell Bank) was donated by Dr Curtis Harris (National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethseda, MD, USA). Cells were cultured in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM; Invitrogen™, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Waltham, MA, USA) containing 10% (v/v) fetal calf serum (HyClone™; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Logan, UT, USA) at 37°C in a humidified 5% CO2 atmosphere. Transient transfections were performed with Lipofectamine^® 2000 (Invitrogen™; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Cells stably expressing short hairpin (sh)RNA specific for human c-Myc (catalogue no., sc-29226-SH) or control shRNA (catalog no., sc-108060) were generated by transfection with plasmid vectors obtained from Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc. (Dallas, TX, USA) and selected with 2 µg/ml puromycin.