Fig. 1

Cytokine expression changes at 7 days after dMCAO. a Cytokine gene profiling at 7 days after dMCAO, inhibitor versus control groups. Clustergram of 84 common cytokines grouped by sample type (i1, i2, i3—samples collected from three different mice from the inhibitor group. c1, c2, c3—three samples from control group). Non-supervised hierarchical clustering was used to display common cytokine gene expression by heat map visualization, with dendrograms indicating coregulated genes across groups or individual samples. Results for two statistically different (between inhibitor and controls) genes Ccl12 and Cxcl3 are enlarged and showed in the bottom left corner. A color bar (bottom) relates color code to the magnitude of the differences in gene expression relative to the all-sample means for each gene. The results are also demonstrated in the form of scatter plots (b) of 84 common cytokine assays, revealing four upregulated and two downregulated genes (with more than twofold difference in expression between the inhibitor and control groups). Orange symbols identify upregulated genes, and blue symbols identify downregulated genes. c Protein expression levels of CCL12 and CXCL3 cytokines were assessed in the lesioned hemispheres of the animals from control (red plots) and inhibitor (blue plots) groups at 7,14, and 21 days after dMCAO, using specialized Mouse CCL12 and CXCL3 PicoKine™ ELISA kits (Boster Biological Technology). Cytokine expressions were also measured in the lesioned hemisphere of dMCAO-subjected mice at 48 h post-dMCAO (orange diamond). N = 6 mice per group/per time point. Two-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s multiple comparison test; *p < 0.05. Error bars: SEM