Fig 4. Effect of CsTPs on pro-fibrotic cytokine productions in co-culture system.

(A) Relative levels of IFN-γ, IL-4 and IL-13 in the supernatants of BMDCs and CD4⁺ T cells co-culture system assayed by ELISA on day 10. In different groups, LPS-activated BMDCs were respectively pulsed with 20 μg/ml CsTPs, 40 μg/ml CsTPs, 0.5 μg/ml Alb (control protein) or only medium. The expression level of each group was shown relative to that of LPS-stimulated BMDCs, which was set to one by a dashed line. (B) Quantification of IFN-γ, IL-4 and IL-13 levels in the supernatants of BMDCs and naïve T cells co-culture system detected on day 10. LPS-treated BMDCs (5×10⁴ /well) were incubated with 20 μg/ml CsTPs, 40 μg/ml CsTPs, 0.5 μg/ml Alb (control protein) or only medium for 24 h and then co-cultured with MACS-sorted naive CD4⁺ T cells from BALB/c mice splenocytes (5×10⁵/well). The supernatants were harvested and centrifuged. Cytokines production were measured by ELISA. All results are presented as mean ± SD of three independent experiments. Statistical significance was analyzed by one-sided paired Student’s t-test (*, P< 0.05; **, P < 0.01; ***, P < 0.001 vs. LPS group. ^####, P < 0.0001 vs. only medium).