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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 May 31.
Published in final edited form as: J Am Coll Cardiol. 2009 Apr 7;53(14):1229–1240. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2008.12.036

Figure 3. Multipotent capacity of cardiac stem cells.

Figure 3

(A) Cardiac and smooth muscle differentiation of CSCs in vitro. Immunostaining of GFP positive CSCs with cardiac troponin T (cTnT), myocyte enhancer factor 2C (MEF-2C), connexin-43, and α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA). (B) Endothelial differentiation of CSCs in vitro. The cells were cultured in EGM-2 medium with 10 ng/ml VEGF and showed endothelial differentiation by morphology (I) and uptake of Dil-ac-LDL (II). Endothelial tube formation by differentiated CSCs after 12 hours of plating on Matrigel (III) whereas undifferentiated CSCs cells do not form cord-like structures (IV). (C) Oil red staining and RT-PCR analysis of PPARγ and lipoprotein lipase (LPL) expression shows adipogenic differentiation of the CSCs induced for 2 weeks. (D) Alizarin red S staining of calcium and RT-PCR analysis of osteocalcin expression shows CSCs induced to differentiate into osteoblasts.