Figure 5.

AHR ligands inhibit PDGF-induced cell migration in TED OFs. Non-TED and TED OFs were treated with vehicle or 25 ng/mL PDGFβ with or without 1 uM FICZ or tapinarof for 72 hours. The nucleotide analog BrdU was added to measure DNA synthesis. After culture, cells were fixed and the BrdU label was detected by ELISA as described in the Methods section. (A) PDGFβ treatment increased proliferation, whereas FICZ and tapinarof blocked PDGF induced proliferation in both TED and non-TED OFs. (B) Next, confluent TED OFs were subjected to a wound assay and pretreated with FICZ (1 µM) or tapinarof (1 µM) for 1 hour. PDGFβ (25 ng/mL) was then added to stimulate cell migration. Images were captured at 0, 24, 48, and 72 hours. (C) The area of the scratch was quantified using ImageJ, with the initial wound area normalized to 1.0. Scale bar = 200 µm. Data represent mean ± standard error of the mean from four technical replicates. The experiment was repeated in three different OF strains with representative results shown. One-way ANOVA with Dunnett's multiple comparisons test was used to assess statistical significance vehicle versus treatments: * P ≤ 0.05, ** P ≤ 0.005, *** P ≤ 0.0008 and PDGF versus treatments: ### P ≤ 0.0005, and non-TED versus TED: † P ≤ 0.05.