Characterization of strain specific cardiac macrophage-trophic microenvironments.

The heart is comprised of a complex cellular network of noncardiomyocytes, but it is still unclear how intracellular interactions occur within this network to affect overall tissue physiology and function. Previously, it has been observed that AJ and C57BU6J (B6) mice respond differently to heart attacks, and it is likely that this difference is due to strain specific cardiac cellular composition and intracellular communication. The cardiac cellular composition was determined for both strains, and it was found that AJ cardiac tissue contains a higher number of resident mesenchymal cells (RMCs), but a lower number of endothelial cells (ECs) than was observed in B6 cardiac tissue. Finally, macrophages were isolated from hearts of both strains, and grown in the support cells (ECs, RMCs) of the opposite strain to test the effect of cellular composition on macrophage proliferation. Flow cytometry analysis revealed an overall trend in the control cultures of higher viable, endotheli al, and leukocyte cell counts in AJ than in B6, which most likely correlates to a higher proliferative capacity. Although , no OCltable results could be drawn from the cell counts in the treatment wells, this was a first attempt of utilizing this technique, and feasibility for future work was provided