Figure 6. Anti-fibrotic effects of Rosiglitazone on cultured feline corneal fibroblast.

A. Representative western blots showing protein levels for αSMA. Tubulin levels were assayed as a loading control. For this experiment, cells were pretreated with 25 µM, 50 µM, and 75 µM Rosiglitazone for 30 min, before adding 1 ng/ml of TGFβ in DMEM/F12 containing 1% HS. The cells were cultured in this treated medium for 1, 2 or 3 days and then harvested for western blotting. While some effect could be observed at lower doses, Rosiglitazone clearly inhibited αSMA expression at 75 µM, while tubulin levels remained stable. B. Plots of relative expression of αSMA normalized to densitometric values obtained in cells stimulated with 1 ng/ml TGFβ for each culture day sampled. Data shown are means±SD, averaged over 3 experiments, and they confirm a statistically significant inhibitory effect of Rosiglitazone on αSMA. * P<0.05, Student’s t-test relative to TGFβ-only condition.