Fig. 1

Interaction between GHCer and recombinant TRAX and the increase of angiogenic activities in HUVECs by GHCer. ELISA binding (A) and Biacore analysis (B) for the binding between GHCer and recombinant TRAX. Recombinant TRAX or synthetic GHCer was immobilized on microtiter plate for ELISA assays and TRAX protein was on CM5 chips for Biacore analysis. C Comparison of Biacore assay for the binding between recombinant TRAX and 10 μM of GHCer, or its biosynthetic precursors like SSEA3Cer, Gb4Cer, LacCer, and GalCer. D HUVECs were incubated with GHCer, SSEA3Cer or PBS control for overnight and the meshes (orange), branches (green), and junctions (red) of tube formation were observed with phase-contrast microscope (Scale bar = 100 μm). E The tube area, total tube length, number of branches, and number of meshes for tube formation were calculated using three random areas of each well. *p < 0.05. F HUVECs were incubated with GHCer, SSEA3Cer or PBS for different time and total RNA was extracted for quantitation of VEGFA, KDR, FGF13 FGF2 by real-time quantitative PCR. The mRNA levels were normalized to GADPH. Data were presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD). *p < 0.05