miR-199a-5p, miR-214-3p and miR-99b-5p promote hTERT-HSC activation. hTERT-HSC were transfected with the four mimics and an siRNA negative control (40 and 80 nM) for 72 h and were either fixed or used for migration assessment. αSMA staining was carried out to investigate the potential of the 4 miRNA mimics to elicit HSC activation, which were compared to positive controls TGF-β1 and PDGF (A) and quantified using ImageJ (B). Proliferation was assessed using ki67 staining (C), and was also quantified using ImageJ (D). Migration was assessed using a migration assay that was imaged every hour over 48 h and quantified using ImageJ to assess the speed of wound closure (E). The time for each condition to reach 50% wound closure was assessed to calculate significance between migration capacities for each condition (F). n = 6 for immunostaining quantification. n = 8–9 for the migration assay. Student’s unpaired t test; *, p ≤ 0.05; **, p ≤ 0.01; ***, p ≤ 0.001.