Fig. 1: HDACi suppresses PSC activation via transcriptional regulation.

a Scheme of in vitro PSC activation with drug treatment. b, c Representative images (b) and quantifications (c) of immunofluorescence staining for α-SMA, Ki67 and EdU in PSCs at day (D) 1 and 6 under vehicle (Veh, D6V) or Ent treatment (D6E; 5 μM). Scale bar, 50 μm. n = 3 independent samples. Data are presented as mean values ± SEM. *p < 0.05, = 0.044 (EdU⁺, D6V vs D1), 0.011 (EdU⁺, D6E vs D6V); ***p < 0.001 (others). Two-sided t-test. d Scatter plots from RNA-seq data showing genes significantly upregulated (red) and downregulated (blue) in D6V compared to D1, and those in D6E compared to D6V, with representative genes functionally related to myofibroblast identity (circle), proliferation (square) and lipid metabolism (triangle) highlighted. n = 3 independent samples. False discovery rate (FDR) q < 0.05. FPKM, fragments per kilobase per million reads. e Heatmap showing the expression fold-change (FC) in PSC samples for selected functional genes in PSC activation with or without Ent. f GSEA plots showing the top 500 Ent-downregulated and -upregulated genes at D6 are respectively in genes induced and repressed in PSC activation. NES, normalized enrichment score. g, h Venn diagram comparing genes upregulated in PSC activation and those downregulated by Ent at D6 (g) and selected ontology terms enriched in the overlap genes with p-values and gene counts from GO analysis (h). i, j Venn diagram comparing genes downregulated in PSC activation and those upregulated by Ent at D6 (i) and selected ontology terms enriched in the overlap genes from GO analysis (j). GO analysis (h, j), one-sided Fisher’s exact test. Source data are provided in a Source Data file.