Figure 14.

Sox9 expression is not up-regulated by bile acids in vitro. (A) Biliary organoids treated with DCA for 24 hours reproduce in vivo results, failing to up-regulate Sox9, Cyr61, and Klf6 and demonstrating heterogeneous response in terms of Il6 up-regulation. (B) FITC-conjugated DCA was found in organoid lumens after 9 hours of treatment, whereas FITC-dextran was excluded (n = 16 FITC-dextran treated organoids, 14 FITC-DCA treated organoids; ∗ indicates significance, P = .004, unpaired t test). (C) Primary biliary monolayers treated with DCA in vitro also up-regulated Il6 but failed to demonstrate significantly different expression of Sox9, Cyr61, or Klf6 (∗ indicates significance, P < .05; ∗∗ indicates significance, P ≤ .01, unpaired t test).