Cardiac Niche Influences the Direct Reprogramming of Canine Fibroblasts into Cardiomyocyte-Like Cells

Figure 1

Canine primary culture characterization. Skin (a) and cardiac (b) canine fibroblasts showed similar morphology to human Bj-1 cells (c) and express in similar fashion Vimentin (in green) and Ki67 (in red) (d–f). The percentage of Vimentin and Ki67 positive cells was similar in the three cell populations (g). Growth curves of canine fibroblasts (/fibroblast type) showed comparable proliferation ability with respect to Bj-1 fibroblasts (h). (i) Examples of FACS analysis revealing that canine fibroblast primary cultures highly expressed Thy1 (CD90), similarly to Bj-1 fibroblasts.