Fig. 7: Human adhesions recapitulate biology and gene expression.

a Representative human abdominal adhesion tissue (n = 24 human adhesion specimens) histology (H&E—left, trichrome—middle, picrosirius red—right). Adhesion interface bounded by yellow dotted lines and labeled. Scale bars, 100 μm. b On unbiased-FACS analysis, PDGFRA expression is significantly upregulated in human abdominal adhesion fibroblasts, compared with control peritoneum. CD26 expression is also upregulated, although not significantly. Conditions as labelled in figure. n = 5 biological replicates per condition. c Representative IF staining of human abdominal adhesion tissue for JUN and PDGFRA, right panel is zoom of indicated region in white. Adhesion interface outlined with thick white dotted lines (left panel), colocalization of PDGFRA and JUN expression highlighted with thin white dotted lines (right panel). n = 3 biological replicates. Scale bars, 50 μm. d Quantitation of p-JUN+ cells in human abdominal adhesion tissue pictured in panel c, compared with human control peritoneum tissue. n = 3 biological replicates. e Representative IF staining of human abdominal adhesion tissue shows colocalization of PDGFRA with collagen 1 (COL1) and collagen 3 (COL3). Adhesion interface outlined with white dotted lines. Structures as labelled in figure. n = 5 biological replicates. Scale bar, 50 μm; ×10 zoom at right. f Quantitation of cytokine production (including IL6, MCP-1, PDGF-AA, and IL8) by fluorescent assessment of the cell supernatant from primary human abdominal adhesion fibroblasts in vitro, measured 24 and 48 h after isolation. Values normalized to cell-free media for each cytokine assessed. MFI median fluorescence intensity. Conditions as labelled in figure. n = 3 replicates analyzed per condition per timepoint. g PCA plot of human bulk RNA-seq data shows distinct clustering of human fibroblast specimens FACS-isolated from human abdominal adhesion (n = 6) and control peritoneal tissues (n = 3) (colors as indicated, variances noted on plot). h Heatmap of human adhesion-forming fibroblasts shows significant differential gene expression between conditions. Highly expressed EMT and JUN kinase GSEA pathway genes highlighted in yellow and blue panels, respectively, at right. Color key and histogram at far right. Data and error bars represent means ± SD.*P = 0.04, **P = 0.0078, unpaired two-tailed t-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.