Fig. 8

Peptide5 blocks Cx43-hemichannels in primary hPTECs to dampen secretion of the pro-inflammatory secretome. Primary hPTECs were treated with pro-fibrotic cytokine TGF-β1 (10 ng/ml) for 48 h in the presence/absence of Peptide5 (25µM) (a) and a proteome profiler inflammation array was used to assess secretion of 105 inflammatory mediators (b). Heat map analysis identified multiple changes in protein expression in cells pre-incubated with hemichannel blocker Peptide5 (b), with statistical analysis on 12 selected proteins (c-f) performed. n = 4 per group. Extrapolation of this array data using a published transcriptomic dataset on Nephroseq (g) shows that granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), epithelial cell-derived neutrophil-activating peptide (ENA-78), interleukin-24 (IL24), resistin and leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) expression are increased in kidneys of patients with CKD (n = 48 in patients with CKD and n = 5 normal controls). All groups are n = 3–4 unless otherwise specified. ANOVA and Tukeys post-test was used for all proteome array analysis (c-f), whilst an unpaired t-test with Welch’s correction was used for analysis of transcriptomic data (g). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.005, and ****P < 0.001