Figure 2.
Significant Improvement of Cardiac Function and Cell Engraftment in Infarcted Mouse Hearts Treated with hESC-ECs and SMCs.
Cell therapy was delivered to the ischemic region of the LV after LAD coronary artery ligation. Ejection fraction (panel a) and shortening fraction (panel b) were measured 4 weeks post-infarction in mice receiving no injection (MI), 106 hESC-ECs (MI+EC), and 5×105 each hESC-EC and SMC (MI+EC+SMC). Significant improvement in LV function was achieved in mice that received combined cellular therapy (p<0.05). Transplanted GFP/Luc cells were tracked in vivo via bioluminescent imaging (BLI, panel d–e) and cell engraftment was confirmed post mortem by immunofluorescent staining against GFP (panel f). Panel d, quantification of luciferase signal from mouse hearts receiving cellular injection throughout the course of the experiment. The BLI intensity curves corresponding to panel d and e are highlighted in bold.