Fig. 6

In vitro angiogenesis assay results. Upper panel: representative images of capillary morphogenesis on Matrigel after 24 hours. Lower panel: capillary morphogenesis of healthy and systemic sclerosis (SSc) dermal microvascular endothelial cells (H-MVECs and SSc-MVECs, respectively) quantified as percent field occupancy of capillary projections. Capillary morphogenesis of H-MVECs was evaluated at basal condition and after stimulation with sera from healthy subjects (n = 5), primary Raynaud's phenomenon (pRP) subjects (n = 5), and SSc patients (n = 5) alone or in combination with human semaphorin 3E (Sema3E) peptide, human Sema3E-binding Plexin-D1 (PlxnD1) peptide (a.a. 1683–1694), or both. Capillary morphogenesis of H-MVECs at basal condition was set to 100 %; the other results are normalized to this value. Data are the mean ± SD of three independent experiments performed in triplicate with each one of the five H-MVEC and five SSc-MVEC lines. Six to nine photographic fields from three plates were scanned for each experimental point. Student’s t test was used for statistical analysis. ^§ p <0.05 vs basal H-MVECs; ^# p <0.05 vs healthy serum only; °p <0.05 vs serum from patients with pRP only; *p <0.05 vs serum from patients with SSc only