Fig. 1

CSF3 is elevated and correlated with fibrosis pathogenesis in pulmonary fibrosis. a Heatmap displays gene expression in IPF patient tissues (GSE134692; n = 72) and patient-derived fibroblasts (GSE71351; n = 13) from each dataset. Cytokines, chemokines, and growth factors were selected based on a 1.5-fold increase in expression observed in IPF patients compared to healthy controls. b Expression levels of CSF3 in the Normal and IPF patient group (IPF) from GSE134692 and GSE71351. Each sample count is indicated in the graph. c Immunohistochemical staining of CSF3 in a human pulmonary fibrosis tissue array (LC561a). (Healthy control (HC) = 4, IPF = 52). Scale bar: 500 nm. d and e CSF3 immunohistochemical (IHC) scoring of a human pulmonary fibrosis tissue array, performed using two distinct IHC profiling methods. Scale bar: 200 μm. f Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) measurement of CSF3 in human blood serum. g Immunostaining of CSF3 and Masson’s trichrome staining in mouse lung tissue from an intraperitoneal IPF mouse model. Scale bar = 250 μm. h Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis of CSF3 expression in mouse lung tissue (n = 5 mice per group). i Western blot analysis of CSF3 and α-SMA in each group of mouse lung tissue. j and k ELISA measurements of CSF3 in mouse lung tissue (j) and mouse blood serum (k). l Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) revealed a significant correlation between extracellular matrix and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition-related genes and IPF patients with high CSF3 expression (GSE10667). Statistical significance was determined using t-test