Occurring of In Vitro Functional Vasculogenic Pericytes from Human Circulating Early Endothelial Precursor Cell Culture

Figure 5

In vitro coculture of human Progenitor Perivascular Cells (hPPCs) and endothelial cells on Matrigel. (a)–(d) When cocultured with HUVECs (a), hPPCs (b) are able to exert the role of pericytes by incorporating in network-like structures and aligning with endothelial cells, as shown in merged images ((c) and (d) in greater detail); images are representative of 3 experiments of the 24-hour coculture. Before seeding, cells were labeled with fluorescent vital dyes, green PKH2 (hPPCs) and red PKH26 (HUVECs). (e)-(f) Culture of HUVECs alone results in degenerated network-like structures within 24 hours as shown in (e) (red fluorescence) and (f) (phase contrast). 40x magnification.

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