Morphology evaluation of cultivated endothelial cells

Abstract

Introduction: The origin of cultivated endothelial cells has been target of investigations. These cells can be originated not only from true endothelial cells, but also from monocytes, that equally are able to increase the angiogenesis process. Furthermore, studies showed that endothelial progenitor cells have characteristics that are own of monocytes. Objectives: The aim in this work was to evaluate the morphology of cultivated endothelial cells, which are named “early” endothelial progenitor cells. Methods: The mononuclear cells of peripheral blood were cultivated for nine days, and during the cultive images were acquired by inverted and confocal microscopy. Results: We observed the presence of cellular populations with elongated shape that were associated in small aggregates (colonies). Conclusion: There is still a need for further studies focusing the standardization of more sensitive techniques for obtaining, identifying and quantifying cultivated EPCs.