Fig. 5: Protective mechanisms of LSC-Exo against SARS-CoV-2 infection.
From: Inhalation of ACE2-expressing lung exosomes provides prophylactic protection against SARS-CoV-2
a Representative SARS-N (red), pan-CK (green), Iba-1 (purple) and DAPI (blue) staining for lung tissues of hamsters. Scale bar, 50 μm. b Representative MPO and MX1 immunohistochemistry images from the lung sections of hamsters. Scale bar, 50 μm. c Quantification analysis of MPO and MX1 positive cells in hamster lungs. n = 10. Data are mean ± s.d. d Principal component analysis (PCA) comparing the transcriptome of sham hamster and infected hamsters treated with PBS or LSC-Exo. e Sample clustering based on Pearson’s correlation of transcriptomes in lung tissues from sham, PBS and LSC-Exo group. f Venn diagram of the gene profiles between Sham, PBS and LSC-Exo groups. g Volcano plots displaying of differential gene expression from LSC-Exo versus PBS group with Padj < 0.05, and an absolute value of log2 fold change (FC) > 1 (red, upregulated genes; blue, downregulated genes). n = 3 for PBS group and n = 4 for LSC-Exo group. h Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis of downregulated and upregulated genes from comparisons of infected hamsters treated with LSC-Exo versus PBS. Heatmaps of expression levels of candidate genes in oxidative phosphorylation (i), cytokine mediated signaling and NK differentiation (j), MAPK pathway (k) and TGF-β pathway (l) from the LSC-Exo, PBS and sham groups. m Functionally grouped network of enriched ROS-related categories. Each cluster is represented by a different color. n Heat map showing the differential gene expression of LSC-Exo vs PBS vs Sham. Statistical analysis was measured by one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni correction (c) or two-tailed Wald test with Benjamini–Hochberg correction for multiple comparisons (g, h). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
