Fig. 1.

Redirected T cell can ablate cardiac fibroblasts. (a) Schematic representation of cardiac injury and T cell mediated cardiac fibroblast ablation. Mice were continuously administered angiotensin II and phenylephrine via osmotic pump to induce cardiac injury and fibrosis, and injected with tamoxifen to trigger Cre-mediated OVA expression in the CFs. CD8⁺ OT-I T cells were adoptively transferred 1 week after pump implantation when fibrosis was already established, and mice were sacrificed 4 weeks post-implantation for analysis. (b) Picro-Sirius Red staining of heart coronal sections to evaluate the level of fibrosis (red). Higher magnification of left ventricular fibrosis (bottom). (c) Quantification of ventricular fibrosis (mean ± SEM). *P = 0.0492, #P = 0.0157, (one-way ANOVA between groups P = 0.0001; post-hoc multiple comparisons, Tukey’s test, n = 10, 7, 6, 8 biologically independent animals, respectively). Scale bars = 100μm.