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. 2019 Mar 14;9:4589. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-39485-8

Figure 7.

Figure 7

SSc-FBs are responsible for impaired angiogenesis in an organotypic co-culture assay system in vitro but EGFL7 restores angiogenesis. Angiogenesis was not affected when primary HC-FBs were co-cultured with HUVECS (A). Interestingly, when primary SSc-FBs were co-cultured with HUVECs, angiogenesis was impaired when compared with the tubule formation obtained from co-cultured HC-FBs with HUVECs (B–C). EGFL7 increases the tubule formation when added to the cultured medium (100 ng/ml) thus adding EGFL7 to the list of the pro-angiogenic molecules that rescue angiogenesis defects in SSc patients (E–G). VEGF (25 ng/ml) was used as positive control (F–K). Representative microscopic fields at 4X magnification from triplicate wells. Vascular junction and tubule number and total tubule length were analysed by Angiosys System (TCS CellWorks, USA) (D–H–L). Bars represent mean values ± SEM (measurment of 12 microscopic fields from triplicate wells). Statistical analysis was performed by unpaired and paired t test, two tailed. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.001; ***p < 0.0001.