Figure 4.

Conditioned medium from lung-resident MSCs (LMSCs) decreases the mRNA expression TGF-β and increases the mRNA expression of WNT-5A in A549 cells after scratch wounding. A549 cells were seeded in duplicates and grown to confluence for 48 h. Medium was refreshed and replaced by control medium or conditioned medium (CM) of LMSCs from 3 non-COPD control and 3 COPD donors. Cells were harvested for RNA isolation after 48 h and expression of EGF, VEGF, TGFB and WNT5A was related to the expression of the housekeeping genes B2M and PPIA and expressed as 2^−ΔΔCt compared to baseline. Data are presented as mean ± SEM. LMSC-CM from non-COPD donors is indicated by open symbols, from COPD donors by closed symbols. * = p < 0.05 between the indicated values as analyzed by the Wilcoxon signed rank test for paired observations.