Fig. 3.

A The concentration of IL-6 and IL-8 secreted in culture media was assessed via ELISA at 1, 2, and 4 days of sheet culture. At day 1, there was an insignificant difference in IL-6 concentration between groups (p = 0.32). At day 2, the rapamycin group had 37.6% less IL-6 secretion (1020 ± 18.7 pg/ml compared to 1634 ± 53.0 pg/ml of the DMSO group, p < 0.001, n = 3). At day 4, the rapamycin group had 15.5% less IL-6 secretion (1563 ± 53.5 pg/ml compared to 1850 ± 15.1 pg/ml of the DMSO group, p < 0.001, n = 3). Further, the rapamycin-treated group had a 1.98-, 2.44-, and 3.7-fold greater IL-8 secretion at day 1, 2, and 4 respectively (p < 0.001, p < 0.01, and p < 0.01, respectively). Data represents mean ± SD for n = 3 experiments. Note: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, and ***p < 0.0001. B A microarray was performed to assess differential gene expression profiles for rapamycin-treated PMSC sheets. The gene expression fold change (relative to DMSO-treated PMSC sheets) for 42 genes with at least a 3-fold change and FDR-adjusted p-value of < 0.05 is presented. Three genes of particular interest (FBXO32, CXCL8, and TGFB2) are highlighted by red boxes. All gene abbreviations and full list of gene expression data (with at least 2-fold change in gene expression) are presented in Supplemental Table 1