Journal: bioRxiv
Article Title: Acid stress modulates metabolo-inflammatory pathways in oral epithelial cells
doi: 10.64898/2026.03.16.711383
Figure Lengend Snippet: Schematic representation of the experimental design to investigate the impact of acid stress on oral epithelial cells (OECs) and Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonist stimulation. pH Conditioning : OECs (80% confluence) were cultured in acidified (pH:=:3.0) or complete growth media (pH:=:8.0) for 24h. Morphometric Analysis ( a ): Brightfield micrographs and a machine-learning based image analysis pipeline were used to assess changes in cellular morphology. TLR Agonist Challenge : Cell cultures were subjected to either 100 ng/mL flagellin (TLR5 agonist) or 1 mg/mL Pam3CSK4 (TLR2/1 agonist) for 2-, 6-, or 24h. Molecular profiling ( b ): was conducted on OEC RNA collected after 6h TLR agonist challenge using NanoString® nCounter® technology followed by pathway analysis using the Gene Ontology knowledgebase. A TGF- β ELISA ( c ) was performed on OEC supernatants collected 2-, 6-, and 24h post TLR agonist stimulation. Figure made with Biorender.com
Article Snippet: Low-passage mixed-donor, Primary Human Oral Epithelial Cells (Cat# 36063-01, Celprogen, Inc., Torrance, USA), were thawed from liquid nitrogen, plated on poly-L-lysine-coated T-75 cell culture flasks (Sigma-Aldrich Co., St. Louis, USA; Corning Inc., Durham, USA) and maintained in Human OEC Culture Complete Growth Media (Celprogen, Inc.) containing serum and antibiotics at 37°C and 5% CO 2 for two passages prior to experimentation according to manufacturer recommendations.
Techniques: Cell Culture, Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay