EGFR and escherichia coli infection: To further investigate whether EGFR participates in the inflammatory process in response to E. coli infection, we pretreated U251 cells with 5, 10, or 20 μM of the EGFR inhibitor AG1478 or DMSO as a control, and explored whether NF-κB signaling pathways were involved in the EGFR-mediated inflammatory response.