Figure 4
Adrenergic pharmacological treatments in vitro affect CDC immunophenotype and gene expression levels.
The immunophenotype of BB-CDCs after 4 days of pharmacological treatment with metoprolol (METO) showed a significant reduction in CD90 + cells, expressed as percentage of effect versus control (CTR), compared to isoproterenol (ISO)-treated cells (a), as also shown by the representative cytofluorimetry dot plots (b–d). Gene expression analyses by realtime PCR consistently showed significantly lower normalized gene expression levels of Thy-1 in METO-treated cells compared to both control (CTR) and ISO-treated cells (e). These latter also expressed significantly higher levels of Thy1 (e). Moreover, METO-treated CDCs expressed significantly lower levels of collagen I (COL-A1) and higher levels of collagen III (COL3) compared to both CTR and ISO-treated cells (e), as also shown by their expression ratio (f). (n = 4). *P < 0.05.
