Kidney-Targeted Transplantation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells by Ultrasound-Targeted Microbubble Destruction Promotes Kidney Repair in Diabetic Nephropathy Rats

Figure 2

BM-MSCs culture, characteristics, and tracking. (a) After 10–14 days of primary culture, MSCs were nearly 80%–90% confluent (×100). The intracellular lipid droplets stained with oil red O staining (b), the calcium depositions stained with alizarin red S staining (c), the chondrogenic cells stained with Safranin O staining (d) were observed after 1 week and 2 week of treatment, respectively. (e) MSCs transfected by lentiviral vectors carrying eGFP showed bright green fluorescence. The phenotype of rat MSCs was shown to be positive for CD44 (99.44%, (g)), CD90 (99.37%, (h)), and negative for CD34 (1.17%, (i)), CD45 (7.12%, (j)). (f) represents the isotype control. There were much more eGFP-labeled MSCs localized in the kidney in UTMD + MSCs group (m) than those in MSCs group (k). (l) Comparison of the eGFP-labeled MSCs between MSCs group and UTMD + MSCs group, ^∗𝑃<0.01 versus groups, independent 𝑡-test. (n) VCAM-1 mRNA expression was increased by UTMD and/or MSCs infusion and it had a significant increase after MSCs infusion together with UTMD, ^∗𝑃<0.01 versus groups.