Fig. 3

Effect of hUTC conditioned medium on phagocytosis in RPE from aged normal and AMD donors. hUTC conditioned medium (CM) was prepared as described in “Methods”. a, b RPE cells were isolated from eyes of 3 normal donors without ocular diseases at age 61, 71, and 79, and b from 4 AMD donors at age 65, 84, 86, and 88, respectively, and cultured before experiments. 5 × 10⁴ human RPE cells were plated in a 24-well plate in MEM containing 20% (v/v) FBS for a week. For untreated cells, medium was changed to MEM containing 5% (v/v) FBS. The cells to be treated were incubated with hUTC CM for 24 h and then subjected to phagocytosis assay in the presence of hUTC CM. N RPE cells from eyes of donors without ocular diseases, AMD RPE cells from eyes of donors with AMD, CM conditioned medium. Data represent the mean ± SEM (n = 26). ****P < 0.0001. Representative images of RPE containing fluorescent ingested POS are shown (scale bar = 10 µm)