Fig. 3
The profibrotic response of TGF-β1-treated HBFs is diminished by mucociliary differentiated HBECs in EMTU co-cultures. a HBFs derived from asthmatic patients (AS) and non-asthmatic donors (NA) were cultured alone (CTRL, TGF-β1) or in EMTU co-culture in the absence (CTRL HBEC) or presence of TGF-β1 (5 ng/ml; TGF-β1 HBEC) for 4 days. Then, the FMT potential of HBFs was determined by RT-qPCR using GAPDH as a reference gene. b-d ACTA2, TAGLN and FN1 (FMT-related genes) expression levels in HBFs were presented as 2-ΔΔCt value. Data from all experiments represent the mean ± SEM carried out on HBFs AS (n = 4) and NA (n = 4). Statistical significances were tested using the non-parametric Friedmann with Dunn’s Multiple Comparison post hoc test (comparison between AS and NA group) or Kruskall-Wallis tests (comparison within the group) with Dunn’s Multiple Comparison post hoc test; * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01,*** p < 0.001