Fig. 2
a1-d Accumulation of nanoparticular compounds (dPGS) in cultured rat chondrocytes. Glass cover slides were seeded with rat articular chondrocytes and incubated with respective glycerol-ICC (10−6 mol/L) as a control group (a1-c1) or dPGS-ICC (10−6 mol/L) (a2-c2). Representative images were taken 2 hours (a1, a2), 72 hours (b1, b2), and 7 days (c1, c2) after stimulation. Depicted are phalloidin-Alexa488 (green) as cytoskeleton staining, DAPI (blue) as the nucleus staining and ICC coupled dPGS (red) to visualize the accumulation and localization of dPGS (seeding density: 15.600 cells/cm2, cell passage: 4). Scale bar: 100 μm. d: Rat articular chondrocytes of three animals were pooled and incubated for 24 hours with dPGS-ICC or respective glycerol-ICC as a control group (both: 10−6 mol/L). One control was left untreated to be used as an isotype control. The cells were evaluated flow cytometrically. Depicted are the mean number of cells tested positive for dPGS uptake as percentage (data points) and the mean fluorescence intensities of dPGS-ICC inside the cells (MFI [mean fluorescence intensity], bars) (events counted: 10.000, seeding density: 20.000 cells/cm2, cell derived from 4th passage). A representative experiment is shown