Figure 13

Time-kinetic effect of silencing nuclear factor (NF)κB1 mRNA in bone marrow CD34+ cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis on the generation of fibroblast-like cells. Purified bone marrow CD34+ cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis were transfected with small interfering RNA (siRNA) for NFκB1 or scrambled sequence control siRNA, after which the cells were further incubated in culture medium with stem cell factor (10 ng/ml), granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (1 ng/ml) and tumor necrosis factor-α (10 ng/ml) up to 4 weeks with no medium changes. After various periods of incubation (W, weeks), the morphological changes of the cells were observed under light microscopy. The data are representative of three different experiments.