Figure 2.

Induction of endothelial and smooth muscle cell markers when hMSCs were grown in endothelial and smooth muscle cell differentiation media. Endothelial differentiated cells showed up-regulation of endothelial cell markers eNOS, flk-1 and PECAM-1 by RT-PCR (A) and Western blot (B); immunochemical analysis showed differentiated cells positively expressed eNOS (D). Differentiated cells could uptake DiI-ac-LDL (C) and form more tubes in Matrigel better than un-differentiated cells (E); up-regulations of smooth muscle cell specific marker α-SMA, SM22α and calponin were found in smooth muscle differentiated cells in both gene (F) and protein (G) levels. Differentiated cells showed positive immunofluorescent staining for calponin (H); pc, positive control; c, un-differentiated cells; e, endothelial differentiated cells; s, smooth muscle differentiated cells.