Figure 6. GC-MSCs regained their osteogenic differentiation capability by repressing the expression level of miR-708.

Microscope images (A), RT-PCR results (B), and blot, gray images of western blot analysis at 48 h (C) after transfection are shown. Glucocorticoid treatments induce the high expression of miR-708 which was considered as the chosen miR for further target validation and functional verification because of its stable and significant expression change in all the experiments above. Our findings provided evidence for GC-induced necrosis of femoral head via miR-708 directly regulating SMAD3 expression and indirectly regulating RUNX2 expression (D). In this SMADs-depended signaling pathway, SAMD3 and RUNX2 interact with other transcription factors to trigger target genes expression and lead to functional change.