Figure 2.

Transplant of exosomes into unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO)-treated kidneys contributed to the amelioration of renal injury. (A) Fragments of green immunofluorescence-stained exosomes (PKH67, arrows) were detected in UUO kidneys 4 hours after administration, and only a fraction of the green fluorescence-stained exosomes were colocalized with CD81 (arrows). Green: PKH67, red: CD81, blue: DAPI. Scale bar: 10 µm. (B) Representative sections of kidneys treated with exosomes isolated from GFP-expressing adipose mesenchymal stem cells (GFP-AMSC-exos), exosomes derived from GDNF-modified human adipose mesenchymal stem cells (GDNF-AMSC-exos), or phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) 7 days after operation were stained with Hematoxylin/eosin (HE) and Masson trichrome to evaluate tubulointerstitial changes. Scale bar: 50 µm. (C and D) Renal function as evaluated by the serum creatinine (Scr) and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) levels in UUO mice treated with GFP-AMSC-exos, GDNF-AMSC-exos or PBS (n = 6). (E) Quantitative analysis of tubulointerstitial fibrosis in Masson trichrome-stained sections using the ImageJ program. Five randomly selected high-power fields were quantified and averaged to obtain the value for each mouse (n = 5 per experimental group). The results are expressed as the means ± SEMs of three different experiments. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001.