Figure 9. Increased vascularisation in infarcted hearts after LCZ696 treatment.

(A) Experimental protocol as described in details in Material and methods section. (B) Cardiac mass (heart weight (mg)/body weight (g)) of infarcted mice 10 days after MI. (C) Cardiac function and remodelling index measured by echocardiography 8–9 days after MI (i.e. 1 day before sacrifice). FS: fractional shortening; EF: ejection fraction. Two sets of experiment were performed. All results of the treated mice were related to their respective control (i.e. H₂O-treated infarcted hearts). (D) CD31 staining intensity measured on at least 10 different pictures per heart and per area 10 days after MI. Number of pixels in hearts of LCZ696 treated mice related to the numbers of untreated mice (H₂0). (E) Representative pictures of the ZI+BZ area of infarcted hearts 10 days after surgery, treated with LCZ696 (6 or 60 mg/kg/day) or H₂0 and stained with DAPI (nuclei in blue) and antibodies against CD31 or WT1 protein (green) and BrdU (pink). Scale bars represent 100 μm. (F–G) Percentage of proliferating endothelial (F) or WT1⁺ (G) cells/per pictures in each area of the infarcted hearts (number of CD31⁺BrdU⁺ cells/total number of CD31⁺ cells (F) or WT1⁺BrdU⁺ cells/total number of WT1⁺ cells (G)). At least 10 different pictures evaluated per mouse and per area. B, C, D, F, G: Individual values are represented and the means ± SEM are represented in red. # p<0.05 for different variance between groups, *p≤0.05 using unpaired T tests with or without Welch’s corrections.