Research Paper Volume 8, Issue 5 pp 1102—1114
Rapamycin reverses the senescent phenotype and improves immuno-regulation of mesenchymal stem cells from MRL/lpr mice and systemic lupus erythematosus patients through inhibition of the mTOR signaling pathway
Figure 2. RAPA inhibited the over-activation mTOR pathway to revers the senescence of MSCs from MRL/lpr mice. (A) The over-expression of p-mTOR, p-S6K and p-S6 in p4 MSCs from MRL/lpr mice compared with normal group were determined by western blot analysis. The treatment of RAPA could obviously inhibit the expression of those proteins. GAPDH was used as the internal control. (B) P4 MSCs cultured into 24-well plates. The expression of p-mTOR, p-S6K and p-S6 analyzed by immunofluorescence staining showed that their over-activation in MSCs from MRL/lpr mice could be inhibited by RAPA treatment. Counterstaining with DAPI displays the localization of the nucleus (Scale bar = 50 μm). All data were expressed as the mean±SEM (n = 3,*P<0.05 compared with normal group, #P<0.05 compared with the untreated group).