Fig. 3

Spinal cord protection, remyelinating effects, and good survival of grafted NS/PCs through combination therapy. a Schematic of the time schedule for the combinatory therapy experiment. b Representative H&E-stained and immunohistochemical staining for HNA images of mid-sagittal sections in each group. Scale bars: 1000 μm. c Representative H&E-stained images of axial sections at the lesion epicenter and at the sites located 1 mm rostral and caudal in each group. Scale bar: 300 μm. TP: Transplantation group, Com: Combination group. d Quantitative analysis of the spinal cord area measured in H&E-stained axial sections at each level. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, and N.S., not significant according to two-way measures ANOVA with the Tukey‒Kramer test. n = 6 in the control and HGF alone groups, n = 5 in the TP alone group, n = 6 in the Combination group. e Representative MGB-stained images of axial sections at the lesion epicenter and at the sites located 2 mm rostral and caudal in each group. Scale bar: 1000 μm. f Quantitative analysis of the myelinated area measured in MGB-stained axial sections at each level. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, and N.S., not significant according to repeated-measures two-way ANOVA, followed by the Tukey‒Kramer test. n = 6 in the control and TP groups, n = 5 in the HGF group, n = 7 in the Combination group. Values are the mean ± SEM. g Representative images of the photon counts of BLI up to 63 days. h Quantitative analyses of the BLI-photon counts of the transplanted cells as percentage changes compared with those of the day of transplantation (TP group; n = 8, Combination group; n = 9). *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. Statistical analysis was performed using two-way ANOVA followed by the Tukey‒Kramer test. Values are the mean ± SEM