Fig. 5

HGF knockdown blocks the BMSC-CM-induced effect. a Western blot confirmed that the HGF expression was markedly reduced in BMSCs by the HGF knockdown (n = 3). b The HGF knockdown made BMSCs lose their ability to mediate the differentiation of NSCs, resulting in a lower expression of neurons and a higher GFAP expression when compared to the BMSC-CM- and CM^NC-siRNA-treated NSCs in the presence of BMP4 (the percentage of positive cells in BMP4-treated and BMP4 + BMSC-CM-treated NSCs was from Fig. 1a). c The treatment of CM^HGF-siRNA could not promote neurite outgrowth in the scar bar boundary. This result was also confirmed by Western blot analysis in that the Map-2 expression was reduced in the CM^HGF-siRNA-treated rats when compared to of the CM^NC-siRNA-treated rats (n = 3). d HGF knockdown did not affect the expression of BMP4 (n = 3) while it reduced the p-Smad 1/5/8 expression during the early time phases in the SCI rats (n = 3). e The alterations in the inflammatory cytokines were markedly reduced with the knockdown of HGF in the BMSCs (n = 5), resulting in a large cavity volume (f, n = 3), a higher expression of Caspase-3 (g, n = 3), and worse BBB score (h, n = 12). *p < 0.05, ^#p > 0.05; error bars, s.d; scale bars, 100 μm in a, b; 250 μm in f