Fig. 7.

Immunohistochemical analysis of liver tissue sections after transplantation of BM-MSCs and WJ-MSCs in CCl₄-induced liver fibrosis/cirrhosis. a, b Photomicrographs of liver tissue sections showing immunohistochemical staining for α-SMA indicating the activated myofibroblast, Ki-67 depicting cell proliferation, epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) indicating the presence of hepatic stem/progenitor cells, and human MMP1 showing synthesis of metalloprotease-1. c, d Quantification of Ki-67 and MMP1 positive cells was performed at days 30 and 70 by counting the number of positive cells for five randomly selected fields in each group (n=3 rats for each time points). *P<0.05, ***p<0.001, ns; not significant. Scale bars = 50 μm, magnification 40×. Arrow heads indicate immunohistochemically stained cells. A-SMA alpha-smooth muscle actin, BM-MSCs; bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells, hMMP1; human matrix metalloprotease-1, ns; not significant, WJ-MSCs; Wharton’s jelly-derived mesenchymal stromal cells