Journal: Pharmaceutics

Article Title: Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cells in Skeletal Muscle Are Pro-Angiogenic, and the Effect Is Potentiated by Erythropoietin

doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics15041049

Figure Lengend Snippet: Production of angiogenic cytokines in mMSCs. ( a ) Representative microscopic images of the mMSCs. Left phase contrast image. Original magnification ×40. Right, red fluorescence indicates PDGFR-α. PDGFR-α was ubiquitously expressed in the mMSCs. Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). Bar = 50 µm. ( b ) Concentration levels of VEGF and HGF in the conditioned medium. N = 6. * p < 0.05 vs. BMMSCs. # p < 0.01 vs. skMCs. mMSCs, mesenchymal stem/stromal cells derived from skeletal muscle; PDGFR-α, platelet-derived growth factor receptor-α; DAPI, 4’,6-Diamidino-2-phenylindole; VEGF, vascular endothelial growth factor; HGF, hepatocyte growth factor; BMMSCs, bone marrow mesenchymal stem/stromal cells; skMCs, skeletal muscle cells.

Article Snippet: Rat skeletal muscle cells (skMCs) and human umbilical cord vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were purchased from Cell Applications Inc. (San Diego, CA, USA).

Techniques: Fluorescence, Staining, Concentration Assay, Derivative Assay

Journal: Pharmaceutics

Article Title: Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cells in Skeletal Muscle Are Pro-Angiogenic, and the Effect Is Potentiated by Erythropoietin

doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics15041049

Figure Lengend Snippet: Proliferation of cultured mMSCs by Erythropoietin (Epo). ( a ) Left, Epo-R (green) expression in mMSCs. Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). NC, negative control. Bar = 50 µm. Right, western blot analysis. Epo stimulated the phosphorylation of Akt and STAT3 in the mMSCs. Epo-R, erythropoietin receptor. ( b ) Efficacy of Epo stimulation on the propagation of HUVECs, skMCs, and mMSCs. N = 3 to 6. # p < 0.01. HUVECs, human umbilical cord vein endothelial cells.

Article Snippet: Rat skeletal muscle cells (skMCs) and human umbilical cord vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were purchased from Cell Applications Inc. (San Diego, CA, USA).

Techniques: Cell Culture, Expressing, Staining, Negative Control, Western Blot, Phospho-proteomics

Journal: The Journal of pathology

Article Title: Mitochondrial dysfunction and role of harakiri in the pathogenesis of myositis.

doi: 10.1002/path.5309

Figure Lengend Snippet: (A) Depiction of bioinformatics analysis to identify candidate genes increased in myositis due to virus-induced epigenetic change. Changes in methylation from myositis patient biopsies and Coxsackie B infected human myotubes were compared to gene expression changes in virus-infected myotubes. This identified a set of 39 candidate genes potentially implicated in myositis pathogenesis. (B) Quantification of HRK transcripts by RT-qPCR in healthy and myositis patient biopsies (n=4 healthy and 8 myositis patient samples). HRK mRNA expression is relative to hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT1). (C) Western blot showing HRK protein level in healthy and myositis patient biopsies. BL10 pancreas lysates were used as positive control (indicated by ‘+’). Plot shows average level of HRK relative to the loading control vinculin (n=4 samples each). * p<0.05 and ** p<0.01 by independent t-test.

Article Snippet: We infected primary human myotubes with Coxsackie B6 virus (ATCC #VR-155 - prepared by serial passages in skeletal muscle cells) at a standardized dose of 8 MOI (multiplicity of infection) for 120 h. Methylation profiling of genomic DNA identified 1836 total genes that showed altered methylation status ( Supplementary material, Table S2 ).

Techniques: Virus, Methylation, Infection, Gene Expression, Quantitative RT-PCR, Expressing, Western Blot, Positive Control, Control