Fig. 4.

Suppressive effects of phenolic compounds on fibrotic mediators. LTC-14 cells were treated with recombinant TGF-β at 10 ng/ml for 24 h prior to the incubation of rhein at 20 μM, emodin at 4 μM, curcumin at 20 μM or resveratrol at 20 μM. Transcripts of Acta2 (a), Col I-1α (b) and Fn1 (c) were amplified by means of qPCR. Ct values of the amplified transcripts of the gene of interest were normalized to the endogenous reference Gapdh and expressed as fold changes over the non-TGF-β-treated control. * P < 0.05 when comparing to the control whereas # p < 0.05 when comparing to the TGF-β treatment