Fig. 6: Macrophage-derived TNF promotes prostate fibroblast cell growth.

Primary prostate fibroblasts from two BPH tissues (patients 376, 1579, 012, and 1531) were subjected to indicated treatments. Crystal violet growth assays were performed in low serum conditions (0.5%) over six days. a Fibroblast cultures (n = 4 independent patients) were grown in the presence or absence of 1 or 10 ng/mL recombinant TNF (dark and light blue, respectively). Asterisks indicate significant differences compared to control samples (black lines), determined by two-sided, two-way ANOVA with multiple comparisons test. b Fibroblast cultures (n = 4 independent patients) were grown in the presence of 50% M1 (dark red) or M2 (light red) macrophage conditioned medium (generated from THP-1 cells) ±40 µg/mL TNF neutralizing antibody. Conditions containing anti-TNF neutralizing antibody are indicated with dashed lines. Points indicate the mean ± SEM of at least five technical replicates and graphs are representative of three independent experiments. Asterisks indicate significant differences compared to the paired conditioned medium condition without anti-TNF neutralization, using a two-sided, two-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparisons test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. n.s.=not significant, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, and ****p < 0.0001.