Whole cell protein and nuclear protein preparation, as well as western blotting, were performed as we described previously [24 (link), 25 (link)]. For whole protein, the membrane was probed with primary antibodies of anti-E-cadherin (rabbit polyclonal, R&D System, 1:1000), anti-α-smooth muscle actin (SMA) (rabbit polyclonal, R&D System, 1:1000), anti-fibroblast specific protein (FSP)-1 (rabbit polyclonal, Abcam, 1:1000), anti-collagen I (rabbit polyclonal, Calbiochem, 1:1000) and anti-MCP-1 (rabbit polyclonal, Abcam, 1:500); for nuclear protein, the membrane was probed with anti-NF-κB-p65 subunit antibody (rabbit polyclonal, Abcam, 1:1000). The intensities of the blots were determined using an imaging analysis program (Image J, free download from http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/). The β-actin was used as internal control. The normalized values in different groups were averaged and expressed as fold change with the mean value of control group as 1.
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