“…The acid guanidinium thiocyanate–phenol–chloroform method was used to extract total RNA from the cell pellet of LPMC (10 4 cells) freshly isolated from colonoscopic biopsies (active CD, n = 8; active UC, n = 9; IC, n = 4; control, n = 9). 30 Extracted RNA was reverse‐tran‐scribed into complementary DNA (cDNA) at 42°C for 1 h using 0.5 μL of Rous‐associated virus 2 reverse‐transcriptase (Takara Biomedicals, Ohtsu, Japan) and 0.1 μmol/L of oligo d(T) (Pharmacia) in a 75‐μL reaction mixture. cDNA from the sample (25 μL) and standard cDNA for IL‐6 and IL‐6R (CLONTECH Labs., Palo Alto, CA, USA) were amplified in a 100‐μL reaction mixture containing 0.2 μmol/L of the sense and antisense primers for IL‐6 (CLONTECH Labs; sense, ATGAACTCCTTCTCCACAAGCGC; antisense, GAAGAGCCCTCAGGCTGGACTG), IL‐6R (CLONTECH Labs; sense, CATTGCCATTGTTCTGAGGTTC; antisense, AGTAGTCTGGATTGCTGATGTC), or β‐actin (sense, GTGGGGCGCCCCAGGCACCA; antisense, CTCCTTAATGTCACGCACGATTTC) 31 and 0.5 μL of Taq polymerase (Takara Biomedicals) for 30 (β‐actin) or 35 (IL‐6 and IL‐6R) cycles with the temperature profile consisting of 1 min at 94°C, 1 min at 60°C and 2 min at 72°C in a DNA thermal cycler (Perkin Elmer Cetus, Norwalk, CT, USA).…”