Fig. 1

Inhibition of autophagy improves survival of MSCs in CLP mice. a MSCs were stably infected with negative control lentiviral vector (shNC) or with vector expressing shRNA to inhibit Beclin-1 (shBecn1); western blot analysis of shNC-MSCs and shBec1-MSCs. b Survival curves of CLP mice treated with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS; n = 12 mice per group), shNC-MSCs (n = 14 mice per group) or shBec1-MSCs (n = 13 mice per group) intravenously (1 × 10⁶ cells/mouse). c, d shNC-MSCs or shBec1-MSCs were mixed with matrigel and were injected into naive and CLP mice subcutaneously for 24 hours. c Then MSCs were isolated and stained with annexin V/prodium iodide (PI) for apoptosis assay. d Percentage of MSC apoptosis after injection into naive (n = 4 mice per group) and CLP mice (n = 4 mice per group); data are shown as mean ± SEM. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01