Fig. 3
From: Fluid flow impacts endothelial-monocyte interactions in a model of vascular inflammatory fibrosis
Effect of fluid flow on surface and junctional adhesion molecule expression with or without TNF-α stimulation. (a) ECs cultured for 72 h, either statically or with 1.5 dynes/cm2 of fluidic shear stress. Junctions labeled with VE-cadherin (green) and PECAM-1 (red). Insets show an enlarged view of the VE-cadherin morphological differences between fluidic and static cultures. (b) Quantification of VE-cadherin junctional borders, demonstrating a significant decrease in width for fluidic cultures. Unpaired t-test was used to determine statistical significance, ****p < 0.0001. (c) ECs cultured with basal 10 ng/ml TNF-α stimulation for 24 h of static culture or fluidic shear stress of 1.5 or 10 dynes/cm2. ECs were preconditioned with 1.5 dynes/cm2 of shear stress for 24 h before stimulation. Devices were stained with ICAM-1 (green) and Hoechst (blue). (d). ICAM-1 expression is reported as the percent of cells with high, low, or no ICAM-1 levels. A fluorescence intensity threshold was set across all images to determine expression levels. Results indicate that a greater percentage of ECs express high levels of ICAM-1 in the 1.5 dynes/cm2 condition with TNF-α stimulation compared to static culture (p < 0.001, one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post-hoc test).
