Interferon pathway is activated in polyHEMA cultures.

<p><b>A</b>. The canonical pathway that changed the most in PH4d and in PH7d compared to 2D according to IPA; the interferon pathway with arrows pointing to the top five changing genes in PH4d is shown in Table 2. Genes in red were upregulated in PH4d. Two hundred of the most up- and downregulated genes in PH4d/PH7d compared to the 2D cultures were subjected to IPA analysis. <b>B</b>. The gene expression results were validated by measuring interferon-alpha and beta activity from JIMT1 cells by transfecting them with a Cignal ISRE Reporter dual-luciferase assay kit (Qiagen). The kit measures induction of the STAT1 and STAT2 components of the JAK/STAT-signal transduction pathways as a readout for interferon activity. The cells were grown in 2D, MG, or PH for 3 days before reporter plasmids and transfection reagents were added for 24 hours. *** p-value < 0.001.