Fig. 8.

CD44 partly mediates beneficial effect of TSG-6 in vivo. A: effect of TSG-6 (50 μg) treatment on the dynamics of SpO₂ levels over the course of 8 days following bleomycin injury (representative of 2 independent experiments) in CD44 knockout mice. No significant differences between TSG-6 and PBS groups were observed on any of the days tested. Note that SpO₂ levels of both TSG-6 and PBS groups remained slightly above 90% threshold (dashed line) through day 8. B: dot plot represents the distribution of SpO₂ levels on day 8 following bleomycin injury. Significant differences were observed between bleomycin-injured and uninjured mice, although, in the absence of CD44, TSG-6 failed to improve SpO₂ levels over the PBS-treated group. C–E: BALF was collected in a similar manner as described above for the wild-type mice. No significant differences were observed between total cells, macrophages, and neutrophil numbers between TSG-6 and PBS-treated groups. Values are represented as arithmetic means ± SE (n = 5–8 mice per group). P values were calculated by 1-way ANOVA with a post hoc Bonferroni's multiple comparison analysis performed between all the groups. *P < 0.05.