Figure 6.

Autophagy in keratinocytes regulates fibroblast activation. (A) Schematic summary of experimental procedure. (B) Representative phase-contrast image and (C) quantification of collagen-based cell contraction in human dermal fibroblast cells with or without conditioned medium from HaCaT cells infected with shCON or shATG5 and treated with TNF for 48 h. TNF in medium was neutralized before being added to human dermal fibroblast cells. (D and E) Representative phase-contrast image (D) and quantification (E) of collagen-based cell contraction in human dermal fibroblast cells with or without conditioned medium from HaCaT cells stably transfected with shCON or shATG5 treated with TNF for 48 h. TNF and CCL2 in medium were neutralized before being added to human dermal fibroblast cells. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, compared with the corresponding vehicle (Veh) group. #, P < 0.05, compared with the shCON TNF group. Student’s t-test. Results were obtained from at least three independent experiments