Figure 4.

Effect of fucoidan on the formation of angiogenic tube-like structures in OEC-MSC co-culture. OEC and MSC were co-cultured and treated with 10 µg/mL fucoidan for seven days. (a) The cells were fixed and stained for the endothelial cell-specific molecule VE-cadherin and nuclei. A close-up of the formed angiogenic tube-like structures is shown in the red frame (VE-cadherin in green, nuclei in blue, scale bar = 100 µm). The overview images were inverted and displayed in grey values (scale bar = 200 µm). (b) Area and length of the angiogenic skeleton were quantified semi-automatically. Three stitched images consisting of nine frames were quantified for each donor. The mean values of experiments with three individual donors ± s.e.m. were plotted. Significances compared to the control were calculated with a t-test (** p < 0.01).