Fig. 4

Analysis of fibrosis in the TA muscles of Col6a1-KO/NSG mice after cell transplantation. a Sirius red-stained sectional images of the entire TA muscle 12 weeks after cell transplantation. b Quantitative data on the percentage of Sirius red-positive areas 12 weeks after transplantation. Data are shown as the mean ± SD. c Representative hLamin A/C- and laminin-stained sectional images of the TA muscle (enlarged) 12 weeks after cell transplantation. d Sirius red- and hLamin A/C-stained sectional images of the whole TA muscle 24 weeks after cell transplantation. e,f Quantitative data of the percentage of Sirius Red-positive areas (e) and the number of hLamin A/C-positive nuclei(compared to the number of hLamin A/C at 12 weeks after XF-iMSCs transplantation) (f) 24 weeks after cell transplantation. g Expression of fibrosis marker genes. The mRNA expression level of each gene was analyzed using RT-qPCR in Ad-MSCs, BM-MSCs, and XF-iMSCs. Levels are shown relative to those in XF-iMSCs. Data are shown as the mean ± SD. *p < 0.05, For tx12w, n = 12 (Ad-MSCs), n = 9 (BM-MSCs), n = 11 (XF-iMSCs, medium). For tx24w, n = 4 (XF-iMSCs, medium). qPCR experiment: n = 3 (Ad-MSCs, BM-MSCs), n = 2(XF-iMSCs)