Fig. 7.

Phenotypic alteration of lung fibroblasts via fibroblast–lung cancer cell interaction. The effect of conditioned media on (A) ITGA11, (B) COL11A1, (C) integrin α5, and (D) integrin β1 expression levels in HFL‐1 cells. The conditioned media were harvested from BEAS‐2B as the normal epithelial cells, A549 as the lung adenocarcinoma cell line, and HFL‐1 as the negative control (see Section 2.5). (A‐D; n = 3, unpaired Student’s t‐test) Vertical axis: expression of protein normalized to β‐actin. (E) Sub‐confluent control fibroblasts and CAFs were cultured and the supernatant was harvested after being incubated for 48 h. Subsequently, the migration ability of A549 cells toward supernatant from CAFs was compared to that of the control fibroblasts. (E; n = 6, Wilcoxon) Vertical axis: number of migrated cells per 5HPF. Each symbol represents one patient. The values represent the mean ± SD. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01.