Targeting regenerative exosomes to myocardial infarction using cardiac homing peptide

Vandergriff, Adam; Huang, Ke; Shen, Deliang; Hu, Shiqi; Hensley, Michael Taylor; Caranasos, Thomas G.; Qian, Li; Cheng, Ke

All procedures performed for this study were approved by the North Carolina State University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and were conducted within AAALAC Internationalaccredited facilities. 5−7 week-old female SD rats (Charles River Laboratories; Worcester, MA) were utilized. All of the rats were clinically healthy prior to the study and were free of recognized pathogens (rat coronavirus, rat parvovirus, rat minute virus, Kilham rat virus, Toolan's H-1 virus, rat theilovirus, Sendai virus, pneumonia virus of mice, mycoplasma pulmonis, pneumocistis carinii). Rats were housed in static microisolator cages on direct-contact corn cob bedding (The Andersons, Inc; Maumee, OH). The room was maintained in controlled environmental conditions with a 12:12 h light:dark cycle and temperature between 68-72 °F. Rats were provided with standard rodent chow (Formula 5001; LabDiet, St. Louis, MO) ad libitum and provided continuous access to water using suspended water bottles.