Figure 3

Schematic of the development of an in vitro cell-culture platform to characterize MSC fate within infarct microenvironment. Whole hearts isolated from both healthy and infarcted (1- and 4-week time points) animals are decellularized, solubilized, and incorporated into polyacrylamide gels of stiffnesses corresponding to both healthy and infarcted myocardium. Histologic analysis reveals that cells attach and spread along the gels (scale bar is 100 μm).