Fig 10.

The α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) is highly expressed in TAFs at early passages, as revealed by immunohistochemistry (A) on cells grown in 4-well chamber slides and stained with a specific anti-human SMA antibody (clone 1A4), and by qRT-PCR with cDNA samples obtained from total RNA extracted from cells (right panel, bottom graph). However, α-SMA expression decreases significantly in the older passages (B and right panel, bottom graph). α-SMA expression is also much stronger in TAFs at early passages compared to the MSCs (C) and the other fibroblasts (qRT-PCR; right panel, upper graph).