Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 14, 2018; 24(2): 170-178
Published online Jan 14, 2018. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i2.170
Antifibrogenic effects of vitamin D derivatives on mouse pancreatic stellate cells
Peter Wallbaum, Sarah Rohde, Luise Ehlers, Falko Lange, Alexander Hohn, Carina Bergner, Sarah Marie Schwarzenböck, Bernd Joachim Krause, Robert Jaster
Peter Wallbaum, Sarah Rohde, Luise Ehlers, Robert Jaster, Department of Medicine II, Division of Gastroenterology, Rostock University Medical Center, Rostock 18057, Germany
Falko Lange, Oscar-Langendorff-Institute of Physiology, Rostock University Medical Center, Rostock 18057, Germany
Alexander Hohn, Carina Bergner, Sarah Marie Schwarzenböck, Bernd Joachim Krause, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Rostock University Medical Center, Rostock 18057, Germany
Author contributions: Jaster R, Schwarzenböck SM and Krause BJ designed the study; Wallbaum P, Rohde S, Ehlers L, Lange F, Bergner C, Hohn A and Jaster R performed the experiments; all authors analyzed the data; and Jaster R wrote the manuscript.
Supported by FORUN program of the Rostock University Medical Center.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Robert Jaster, MD, Academic Research, Professor, Senior Scientist, Department of Medicine II, Division of Gastroenterology, Rostock University Medical Center, E.-Heydemann-Str. 6, Rostock 18057, Germany. jaster@med.uni-rostock.de
Telephone: +49-381-4947349 Fax: +49-381-4947482
Received: October 10, 2017
Peer-review started: October 10, 2017
First decision: October 30, 2017
Revised: November 15, 2017
Accepted: November 27, 2017
Article in press: November 27, 2017
Published online: January 14, 2018
Processing time: 96 Days and 21.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Modulation of the stroma response by vitamin D has been suggested as a concept to treat chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. Here we show that three derivatives, vitamin D2, vitamin D3 and calcipotriol, with similar efficiencies prevented pancreatic stellate cell (PSC) activation in vitro. Once the cells were fully activated, vitamin D failed to induce a reversal of the myofibroblastic phenotype, but still exerted antifibrotic effects by diminishing the uptake of proline and secretion of interleukin-6, an autocrine mediator of PSC activation. Our findings encourage further studies on the potential of vitamin D derivatives as antifibrotic drugs.