Figure 5.

APN enhances up‐regulation of MMP‐9 expression in cardiac fibroblasts in response to proinflammatory stimulation. Cardiac fibroblasts were pretreated with APN (20 μg/mL) for 6 h followed by stimulation with TNFα (10 ng/mL), LPS (1 μg/mL), and R‐848 (5 μg/mL) for 18 h. Left panel: MMP activities in conditioned media were measured by gelatin zymography. Right panel: Bar graph indicating quantified gelantinolytic MMP‐9 activities. Results are presented as Mean ± SEM in arbitrary units (n = 3 independent experiments). Statistical differences were assessed using the Kruskal–Wallis test followed by post hoc testing via Mann–Whitney U test for pair‐wise comparisons between individual groups.