Human Umbilical Cord-Mesenchymal Stem Cells Survive and Migrate within the Vitreous Cavity and Ameliorate Retinal Damage in a Novel Rat Model of Chronic Glaucoma

Figure 7

Lentivirus GFP-labeled hUC-MSC survival and localization after intravitreal transplantation. (a) Morphology of the hUC-MSCs transfected with lentivirus GFP showed the high rate of transduction, viewed under an inverted fluorescence/bright-field microscope. Scale bar: 200 μm. (b) Representative fluorescent imaging under a Nikon AZ100 motorized zoom fluorescence microscope showed that GFP-labeled hUC-MSCs survived in the posterior segment for at least 8 weeks posttransplantation. (c) Fluorescence microscopy revealed that most GFP-hUC-MSCs had adhered to the posterior lens capsule, and a portion of the cells had migrated to the host retina, in clusters, within the vitreous cavity 1-week posttransplantation (A–D). Some of the GFP-hUC-MSCs had migrated to the retina and were localized in the inner limiting membrane of the retina (E–G), as indicated by the arrows (G). Low magnification images are shown in panels (A–D), scale bar: 500 μm; high magnification of the area of the white quadrilateral in (A) is shown in (E–G), scale bar: 100 μm.

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