Fig. 3

Total and extracellular vesicle-depleted conditioned media from human MSC but not HCEC inhibit high glucose-induced secretion of inflammatory cytokines by RPTEC/TERT1 cell stable monolayers. a Schematic diagram of the experimental protocol (+/− EV = without and with extracellular vesicle depletion). b Graphs depicting the concentrations of IL-8, IL-6, MCP-1 and NGAL in the supernatants from RPTEC/TERT1 cell monolayers cultured without (control) and with various conditioned media (CM) during the final 2 days of 5-day cultures under high glucose (HG, left graphs) and mannitol (MAN, right graphs) conditions. All results are expressed as mean ± SD of n = 6 technical replicates for each condition. For cultures containing human (h) BM-MSC-derived CM, results are shown for MSC from two different donors [Donor 1 (blue) and Donor 2 (green)]. MSC-control = Unconditioned MSC medium. MSC-CM (whole) = Non-extracellular vesicle (EV) depleted MSC-CM. MSC-CM (-EV) = Extracellular vesicle (EV) depleted MSC-CM. HCEC-control = Unconditioned human corneal endothelial cell medium. HCEC-CM = CM from human corneal endothelial cells. Statistical analyses performed by one-way ANOVA (for hBM-MSC versus control) and unpaired Student’s t test (for endothelial cell versus control). **** p < 0.0001, *** p < 0.001, * p < 0.05, ns = not significant