A Small-Sized Population of Human Umbilical Cord Blood-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Shows High Stemness Properties and Therapeutic Benefit

Figure 7

Improved therapeutic effect of the small-size population in an elastase-induced emphysema model. (a–c) Mice were exposed to elastase for 7 days and then intravascularly injected with cells of different sizes derived from UCB-MSCs. (a) The histological assessment at 7 days based on lung sections stained with H&E. Morphometric analysis quantified the mean linear intercept (MLI) (, ; ). (b) Representative immunofluorescence photomicrographs of vWF staining in the lungs of each group. vWF was labeled with FITC (green) and nuclei were labeled with DAPI (blue). The number of vWF-positive cells was counted in six randomly chosen fields. The percentage of vWF-positive cells was normalized based on the number of nuclei (, ; ). (c) SP-C was labeled with Cy3 (red) and nuclei were labeled with DAPI (blue). The number of SP-C-positive cells was counted in six randomly chosen fields. The percentage of SP-C-positive cells was quantified based on the number of nuclei (, ; ). (d) The number of human β2MG-stained cells was analyzed from at least six randomly chosen fields at 3, 5, and 7 days after cell injection (, ; ).  μm. D: day; H: heterogeneous; L: large; S: small.

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