Effects of forskolin and PGE2 on progesterone synthesis by goat luteal cells at early and late stages of corpus luteum

The aim of this research was to examine the effects of forskolin and PGE2 on steroid synthesis in goat luteal cells cultured at early and late corpus luteum. Therefore, the luteal cells removed from both stage of corpus luteum were cultured with newborn calf serum for the first 18 h. Then, media was changed and different concentrations of forskolin (10, 100ng/ml) or PGE2 (10, 100ng/ml) were added to the fresh media for another 96 h. The culture media was replaced every 48 h and the retrieved media was kept frozen at -20 °C until hormone analysis. Luteal cells treated with forskolin produced a higher production of progesterone in a dose-dependent manner, compare to the control well at early and late stage of corpus luteum. Lower dose of PGE2 increased the progesterone secretion in luteal cells compare to the control groups at the late stage of corpus luteum but not at early stage. The cells treated with higher dose of PGE2 had no significant effect on progesterone synthesis at early and late phase of goat corpus luteum in comparison to control groups. As a result, this study in goat shows that forskolin promotes progesterone synthesis of the luteal cells at the early and late corpus luteum, but PGE2 is only effective in cells treated with low dose at the late stage.