Fig. 1

SC injected MSCs display a longer dwell time at the site of injection. (A), MSCs were transduced with a firefly luciferase (fluc) vector that also encodes eGFP (fluc-GFP) to enable the quantification of transduction efficiency (indicated by %flu-GFP⁺) by flow cytometry. The cell suspension prepared for injection was adjusted to ensure 1 × 10⁶ fluc-GFP⁺ MSCs per injection. (B) Representative bioluminescent images of luciferase-expressing MSCs after IV, IP and SC injections, with bar graphs present the changes in the radiance (n = 3 mice per group). (C) In vivo bioluminescent signal titration: various number of luciferase-expressing MSCs were injected via SC route into the hock to examine the lower threshold of the detection range. Data expressed as mean ± SEM; n = 3 mice per group