Fig. 5: Phenotype and gene expression of in vitro cultured TECs and NECs.

a Cell morphology of cultured TECs and NECs at passage 3 in a 10X brightfield microscope. b Venn diagram of DEGs (padj < 0.05) in TECs compared with NECs and the overlap between cultured and primary ECs. c, d Preserved pathways in cultured TECs derived from overlapping differentially expressed genes that are upregulated (log2FC ≥ 1) or downregulated (log2FC ≤ −1). e Key marker gene expression compared to NECs in the primary, passage 2, and passage 3 cultures.