collagen - collagen measurement (Jul/05/2005 )

I am currently looking traditional medicinal plants as treatment for silica-induced silicosis which is marked by inflammation and fibrosis. In order to asses whether these plants are effective or not I want to look at how they affect fibrosis, and this I want to determine by observing the production of collagen. Any help as to how I can do that? Assays maybe?

I'm looking at the effects of hypoxia on the induction of fibrosis, using fibroblasts as my cell model. I've used Northern analysis to analyse collagen I RNA production in these cells but that only works if your cells are transcribing collagen. Western analysis will tell you about protein production but collagen is a big molecule so you'll need to optimise for that.