Fig. 8. Impact of FKBP12 downregulation on LC3II/LC3I ratio (A) and caspase-3 activity (B) in Tacrolimus-, Sirolimus- and Everolimus-treated HepG2 cells. The downregulation of FKBP12 was carried using siRNA technologies. Autophagy and apoptosis were determined using the measurement of LC3II/LC3I ratio and commercial caspase‐3 activity assay, respectively as described in Materials and Methods. The protein expression of LC3II and LC3I was evaluated by Western‐blot analysis as described in Material and Methods. Results are expressed as mean ± SEM of six independent experiments. *p ≤ 0.05 and **p ≤ 0.01 between control and immunosuppressant‐treated cells. The groups with different letters (a, b, c, d, e or f) were significantly different (p ≤ 0.05).