Novel combination of collagen dynamics analysis and transcriptional profiling reveals fibrosis-relevant genes and pathways

Together, these data demonstrate, using a novel combination of technologies, that the core process of fibrosis, i.e. the formation of new collagen, correlates not only with a wide range of genes involved in general extracellular matrix production and modification but also with cell proliferation. The observation that the large majority of the genes which correlated with new collagen formation also were upregulated during TGFβ1-induced myofibroblast differentiation provides further evidence for their involvement in fibrosis.