Fig. 4: Reduced inflammatory state during lung transplantation (LTx) and follow-up.

a Plasma cytokine levels were monitored throughout the 48-hour period following transplantation, with 1 h marking the time elapsed since the start of treatment. EP stands for endpoint of the experimental timeline. b Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) was tested for cytokine concentrations at the termination of the experiment represented as a box-and-whiskers plot with a median line, a plus at the mean, and minimum and maximum values. c Cell counts including neutrophils, lymphocytes, and white blood cells were analyzed. Statistical significance applies to direct comparison of two-step treatment to the non-treated group. d Scoring of the lung injury across groups (top) and scoring of the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) cell counts per mm² (bottom). e Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining representative of n = 16 of non-treated (left), one-step treated (middle) and two-step treated (right) biopsies taken at the end, following 4 h of isolated transplanted lung function. f Representative images of n = 5 lungs of TUNEL staining in non-treated (left), one-step treated (middle) and two-step treated lungs (right) with representative black arrows indicating positively stained cells used in the TUNEL score. Scale bars represent 50 µm, respectively. All graphs represent data from either the two-step treated recipient lungs (n = 6), the one-step treated recipients (n = 4) or non-treated lungs (n = 6). Statistically significant differences between groups were tested with two-sided Student’s T-test and within groups with ANOVA when data were normally distributed. The two-sided Mann–Whitney test and the Kruskal–Wallis test were used when data were not normally distributed. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. All values represent the mean ± standard deviation unless otherwise stated.