Fig. 6

RBE effects on GMSC and HMEC-1 cell proliferation and stemness gene expression. GMSCs were treated in growth medium with different concentrations of Ribes nigrum bud extract (RBE; 100 ng/mL to 100 μg/mL) for a 48 h or b 72 h. At the end of the treatments, the cell proliferation was evaluated using the MTS assay. The data are expressed as the percentage versus the untreated cells (CTRL), which was set to 100%, and are presented as the mean values ± SEM of three independent experiments, each performed in duplicate. c GMSCs were treated with RBE (50 μg/mL) for 24 h. At the end of the incubation, a real time RT-PCR analysis of mTOR, Oct4, and SOX2 was performed. The data are expressed as the fold change versus the control (CTRL) levels (without RBE), which were set to 1, and are presented as the mean values ± SEM of three different experiments. Human microvascular endothelial cell (HMEC)-1 cells were treated in growth medium with different concentrations of RBE (100 ng/mL to 100 μg/mL) for d 48 h or e 72 h. At the end of the treatments, the cell proliferation was evaluated using the MTS assay, as described in the Methods. The data are expressed as the percentage versus the untreated cells (CTRL), which was set to 100%, and they were presented as the mean values ± SEM of three independent experiments, each performed in duplicate. f Non-linear regression with variable slope of the RBE concentration-response curve at the different times. The significance of the differences was determined by one-way ANOVA, followed by Bonferroni’s post-hoc test: *P ≤ 0.05, **P ≤ 0.01, ***P ≤ 0.001 vs. control