Figure 3.

Conditioned medium from juxtacrine culture of IL-6 KO mice did not accelerate cell migration and cell numbers of BMSCs. (a) ELISA assay showed IL-6 protein significantly increased after 24 hours in the supernatant from co-culture of mouse macrophages and BMSCs from wild-type (WT) mice, while no IL-6 protein was secreted by the co-cultures from BMSCs and macrophages generated from IL-6 knockout (IL-6 KO) mice. Data are mean ± SEM (n = 2 in each group); **P < 0.01; *P < 0.05. (b) Transwell assays compared the migration of mouse BMSCs cultured for 8 hours in conditioned media from WT cells and in conditioned medium from IL-6 KO cells. Migrated cells were counted after fixation and hematoxylin staining. Five fields of view were randomly picked for each sample, and the number of migrated cells per field of view was counted. Only conditioned medium of co-cultures from WT cells increased migration of BMSCs. All experiments were performed in duplicate. Data are mean ± SEM (n = 2 in each group); *P < 0.05. (c) Cell scratch assays compared the migration of mouse BMSCs cultured for 8 hours in conditioned media from WT cells or from IL-6 KO cells. Only conditioned medium of co-cultures from WT cells increased migration of BMSCs. All experiments were performed in duplicate. Data are mean ± SEM (n = 3 in each group); *P < 0.05. (d) Only conditioned medium of co-culture from WT cells increased mouse BMSC numbers after 1, 2, and 3 days of culture. IL-6 KO groups did not affect cell number. Data were mean ± SE (n = 3 in each group); *P < 0.05.