Fig. 4

Functional properties of cardiac explant-derived cells. a Endothelial cells form capillary-like structures in Matrigel, uptake acLDL (left) and demonstrate a CD31-positive phenotype (middle). A merged image is represented in the picture on the right. Scale bar 100 μm. b Angiogenic cytokine profiles of conditioned medium obtained from cardiac explant-derived cells before and after MACS separation of CD31-positive cells. Wilcoxon test. c Evaluation of functional properties of CD31-positive endothelial cells in vivo. Visualization of injected mix (Matrigel + cells with the vital dye MitoTracker Deep Red FM) after 14 days with a Kodak In-Vivo Multispectral Imaging System device (left). Vasculature in cryosections of the Matrigel plug at day 14 after injection of Matrigel only, Matrigel + endothelial cells and Matrigel + endothelial + smooth muscle cells is detected by isolectin B4 Alexa 594 conjugate staining. Scale bar 100 μm. d A diagram representing the number of vessels positive for isolectin B4 Alexa 594 conjugate staining (red colour) as determined under a fluorescence microscope in 10 random fields of view. Wilcoxon test with Bonferroni correction. * vs Matrigel only, p = 0.0005; ** vs Matrigel + endothelial cells, p = 0.00003. e Fluorescent in situ hybridization of human and mouse DNA probes (hCot and mCot, respectively) to cryosection of Matrigel + EC + SMC. Human probes (green) are distributed evenly over the nuclei, whereas mouse probes (red) are detected in discrete dots due to the structure of α-satellite repeats in a mouse genome. Nuclei are counterstained with DAPI