Figure 1: Needle puncture injury in rat-tail disc leads to the development of fibrocartilaginous matrix and loss of notochordal (NC) and stem cells in nucleus pulposus (NP). | Scientific Reports

Figure 1: Needle puncture injury in rat-tail disc leads to the development of fibrocartilaginous matrix and loss of notochordal (NC) and stem cells in nucleus pulposus (NP).

From: Molecular Therapy for Degenerative Disc Disease: Clues from Secretome Analysis of the Notochordal Cell-Rich Nucleus Pulposus

Figure 1

(A) Representative fluoroscopic image-guided needle puncture injury in rat-tail disc NP. (B) Histological analysis demonstrating representative hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and Safranin O staining images showing development of a fibrocartilaginous matrix over a period of 10 weeks p.i. in rat NP. Both H&E and Safranin O staining was done in duplicates on IVD sections obtained from all the animals in each group. Immunohistochemistry showing the loss of the ECM proteins, aggrecan and collagen 2 in time dependent manner (healthy to 10 weeks p.i., Scale bar 50μ, n = 2 per group). (C) Representative Western blot panels showing alterations in the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β and TNFα), inflammation mediator, Cox2 and ECM proteins (MMP-3, MMP-13, TIMP1 and ADAMTS4) in a time dependent manner in post-injury rat NP tissue lysates. (D) Representative Western blot panels showing loss of NC markers (brachyury, galectin 3) and stem cell markers (Oct4, Nanog) in NPs obtained from rat-tail injured discs over a period of 10 weeks. β-actin was used a loading control in Western blots. All Western blots were run under the same experimental conditions as described in Materials and Methods.

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