Figure 1.

Human corneal myofibroblasts on HC-HA/PTX3 form aggregation and revert to keratocytes. Passage 3 HCF were induced into myofibroblasts by addition of TGFβ1 as verified by immunofluorescence staining to α-SMA (A) and passaged on plastic with or without immobilized HA or HC-HA/PTX3 for 7 days for phase contrast micrography and immunostaining to α-SMA (B, nuclear staining by Hoechst 33342, Bar = 100 µm). Expression of keratocan mRNA and protein was determined at Day 1 by quantitative RT-PCR using the expression level on plastic set as 1 (C, *P < 0.05, ***P < 0.001, n = 3) and by Western blot using β-actin as the loading control (D), respectively.