Fig. 4

Improvement of pulmonary vascular remodeling in the PH phase in the BGF-treated groups. A, B Representative images of (A) hematoxylin–eosin staining (vessel indicated by black arrow) and B immunostaining of α-smooth muscle actin/α-SMA (green; stains smooth muscle cells) and von Willebrand factor/vWF (red; stains endothelial cells) in histological lung sections (vessel indicated by white arrows) from each experimental group. Scale bar: 50 μm for hematoxylin–eosin and 100 μm for immunostaining. C Quantification of distal pulmonary artery muscularization as determined by immunofluorescence staining of histological sections as described in the Methods section. n = 3 per group. The data are presented as the mean ± S.E.M. (standard error of mean). Two-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post-hoc test was used to analyze differences between each group, as shown in (C). *, p < 0.05 compared with the PBS/Vehicle group, #, p < 0.05 compared with PBS/Elastase in the respective nonmuscularized, partially muscularized and fully muscularized groups