Fig. 5.

(A and B) hBD-3-induced upregulation of CCL20 transcript in HOECs. HOEC monolayers (mixed donors; N = 3) were treated with the indicated amounts of synthetic hBD-3 for 6 h. Total RNAs from both treated and untreated cells were isolated, the hBD-3 transcripts were amplified by RT-PCR (A), and the changes were quantified by real-time PCR (B). HK5 (human keratin 5) was used as a housekeeping gene. (C) hBD-3-induced release of CCL20 by HOECs. HOEC monolayers (mixed donors; N = 3) were treated with the indicated amounts of synthetic hBD-3 for 6 h, and the levels of CCL20 in the cell-free supernatants were determined by ELISA, followed by determination of the fold changes. (D) Kinetics of hBD-3-induced CCL20 release by HOECs. HOEC monolayers (mixed donors; N = 3) were treated with hBD-3 (5 μg/ml) for the indicated time periods, and release of CCL20 in cell-free supernatants for both treated and untreated cells was determined by ELISA. Results shown in panels B to D are the means ± standard deviations of three independent experiments. *, P < 0.05.