Figure 2

Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) production of angiogenic molecules when co-cultured with epithelial cells (ECs) from healthy controls (HCs) and patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc). (a, b) The pictures show the quantification by qRT-PCR of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A (a) and VEGFR-2 (b) mRNA levels in HC- and SSc-MSCs, sorted after co-cultures. Both SSc- and HC-ECs significantly increased VEGF-A and VEGFR-2 levels in MSCs, compared to the production from MSCs cultured alone (*P = 0.008; **P = 0.0002; ***P <0.0001). (c) Western blot analyses confirm results observed in qRT-PCR analyses. Pictures are representative of all experiments. (d) VEGF-A ELISA assays. VEGF-A was quantified in the supernatants of both single culture and co-culture conditions. The results mirrored those observed by qRT-PCR and western blot analysis (**P = 0.0002; ***P <0.0001). All the results are expressed as median (range) of triplicate experiments. (e) The cytofluorimetric analysis shows the fluorescence intensity of HC- and SSc-MSCs before co-culture (purple histograms) and fluorescence intensity of HC- and SSc-MSCs after co-culture (green histograms).