The differentiative effects were more reduced by the inhibitor when the stimulation was obtained with the SNs collected from CHO-AFs (Fig. 5a, c) compared to the treatments with SNs from control fibroblasts, further indicating that KGF might represent the major paracrine effector secreted by the activated fibroblasts associated with the cholesteatoma lesions. Here, FGF7 is linked to cholesteatoma.