Fig. 2.

General scheme of the triple-cultivation system setup and the measured parameters at different steps. The triple culture consists of 2 steps of interaction. Step I: hDFSC interaction with bacteria. In a second step, primed hDFSCs were allowed to interact with neutrophils in direct and indirect (2-chamber system) contact experiments (Step II). Unprimed hDFSCs, bacteria, fresh medium, or conditioned DMEM media from the initial co-culture (Step I), which was carried over in the second step, were used as controls. Stem cells were preincubated with oral bacteria under anaerobic conditions at MOI = 100 (Step I). For the direct contact experiments, freshly isolated neutrophils were incubated with hDFSCs at a ratio of 1: 10 under anaerobic conditions (Step II). At each experimental level, several phenotypes were analyzed as denoted in the figure.