Figure 7

The blood vessels in the engrafted ASCVT at 4 weeks after the transplantation. (a–f) The engrafted ASCVT at 4 weeks after transplantation. The serial sections are used for each staining. (a,b) HE staining. Enlarged vein-like vessels (V) are found in the graft. (c–f) Immunostaining. The endothelium of vein-like vessel is positive for both mouse/human CD31 (m/hCD31) (c) and human CD34 (hCD34) (d,e). The mural cells show positive immunostaining for αSMA (c), human CD90 (hCD90) (d), and NGs (e), indicating that this structure derived from hASCs. (f) Immunostaining for human vimentin and EGFP. The engrafted ASCVT was constructed by using HUVECs labeled by EGFP. The endothelial cells showed EGFP-positive immunostaining (arrows), demonstrating that the vascular structures in ASCVT engrafted and constructed the vein-like vessels surrounded by mural cells. The nuclei of the cells in the dark field images were visualized by DAPI (blue color). The images are representatives from two independent experiments.