Coll 1

At the end of the experiment, the animals were intracardially perfused under deep anesthesia (pentobarbital 150 mg/kg) with 4% formaldehyde in 0.1 M PBS (IKEM, Prague, Czech Republic). The tissue containing implants were dissected from the area, postfixed in 10% formaldehyde and further decalcified with formic acid (Fingerland's department of Pathology, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic). One paraffin block was prepared from each sample, cut into 4 μm thin sections and stained with hematoxylin-eosin (H&E). Sections were examined under a light microscope and histomorphometrical analysis was performed using NIS-Elements software (Nikon Instruments, Inc., USA). Immunofluorescent staining for DAPI (Sigma, St Louis, Missouri, USA), RECA, COLL1, MT-CO2 (all from Abcam, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) was used to identify the potential survival of transplanted cells. Antigen-antibody complexes were visualized using goat anti-mouse IgG secondary antibody conjugated with Alexa-Fluor 488 (Molecular Probes Invitrogen, Carlsbad, California, USA). The samples were examined using a spectral confocal microscope (Carl-Zeiss, Oberkochen, Germany). Results were calculated as a percentage of positive samples in the whole sample group.