Systemic Infusion of Expanded CD133⁺ Cells and Expanded CD133⁺ Cell-Derived EVs for the Treatment of Ischemic Cardiomyopathy in a Rat Model of AMI

Figure 1

Characterization of the myocardial infarction model, expanded CD133⁺ cells, and expanded CD133⁺ cell-derived EVs. (a) Electrocardiographic tracing of a rat before surgery (°) and after 5 minutes of coronary occlusion (). An increase in the T wave and the ST segment (red circle) is observed, which indicates myocardial hypoxia and confirms the success of the procedure. (b) Electrocardiographic tracing in DI lead performed 24 hours after coronary occlusion. The identification of negative Q wave (highlighted in red) demonstrates that the induction of AMI was successful. (c) Echocardiographic evaluations revealed infarct size similarity in all animals before treatment, indicating no significant difference in initial ischemic injury among infarcted groups. The control group showed intact hearts with no evidences of IAM. (d) Representative field showing the endothelial-like morphology of expanded CD133⁺ cells at passage 4 (magnification 200x, scale bars 100 μm). (e) Representative flow cytometry analysis of cell surface markers of CD133⁺ cells at passage 3. The isotype control is shown as a red line histogram. (f) Representative tracing of CD133⁺-EV concentration and size by nanoparticle tracking analysis. (g) Representative transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images of CD133⁺-EVs. The lower panel represents immunogold staining of surface proteins CD31 (left) and CD63 (right).

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