Figure 5: MSC therapy protects against fibrotic changes to the KC bladder.

(a,b) RQ-PCR analysis of inflammation (a) and fibrosis (b)-related genes in the indicated bladder tissues. Expression is presented as % Gapdh and shown as dot plot with the mean ± SEM (n = 5; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 compared with the KC group). ns = non-significant. (c) Fluorescent immunohistochemical detection of phosphorylated Smad2 or Smad3 protein (green) in the indicated bladder tissues (magnification ×400). Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). Scale bar = 20 μm. Asterisk and arrow indicate the non-specific auto-fluorescence and intra-nuclear staining of phosphorylated Smad proteins, respectively. Quantitative data were normalized to those of the sham group and are presented as dot plot with the mean ± SEM. n = 7, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 compared with the KC group with Bonferroni post-test.