Fig. 2

CT-Exo protected against vascular calcification in the VD-induced mouse model. (a) Uptake of DiR-labelled CT-Exo in aortic VSMCs of mice. The mice were subjected to the intravenous administration of PBS, DiR or DiR-labelled CT-Exo treatments (100 µg/mice, n = 3 per group). Representative in vivo fluorescence image of CT-Exo distribution in mice 24 h after CT-Exo injection. (b) Experimental design of the VD-induced vascular calcification mouse model treated with PBS, CT-Exo or RT-Exo by intravenous injection (n = 6 per group). ARS (c) and Von Kossa staining (d) and quantification of the percentages of ARS+ (f) and Von Kossa+ (h) areas. (g) Vascular calcium content measurement. RUNX2 expression in thoracic aorta (e) and quantitation of positive staining area (i) are shown. The black scale bar is 200 μm and the blue scale bar is 50 μm. The CTRL group represents the negative control group with only PBS treatment. The PS group represents the positive control group with only β-GP treatment. The data are presented as the mean ± standard deviation with three replicates for each group. The data were analysed with one-way ANOVA with the Bonferroni post hoc test or the unpaired, two-tailed Student’s t-test. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; ****p < 0.0001