In VSMC pretreated with the ERK-2 inhibitor PD98059 (10 mM), migration induced by heme was partially inhibited (Fig. 3A) and heme proliferative effect on VSMC was impaired (Fig. 3B).
Fig. 4 shows that the inhibition of HO activity by both, SnPP (Fig. 4A) or ZnPP (Fig. 4B), potentiates the effect of heme on VSMC proliferation.
Additionally, it was observed that inhibition of HO-1 by ZnPP induced a further increase in hemeinduced ROS production (Fig. 4C), suggesting that activation of HO system attenuates the NADPHox-dependent activation of VSMC induced by heme.
Heme effects were shown to be redoxsensitive, since the antioxidant Trolox (100 mM) abrogated heme-induced VSMC migration and proliferation (Fig. 1C,D).
Corroborating recent studies that showed heme as an inductor of ROS generation via NADPHox in neutrophils, macrophages and in VSMC [7,8,19], the pretreatment of cells with DPI (10 mM), a NADPHox inhibitor [20], prevented heme-induced ROS production in A7r5 VSMC (Fig. 2A).
Moreover, DPI strongly inhibited heme-induced VSMC migration (Fig. 2B) and blunted the proliferative capability of heme-treated VSMC that reached levels below the controls. (Fig. 2C), indicating that heme effects on VSMC migration and proliferation are modulated by NADPHox.
As can be observed in Fig. 1, heme has a potent chemotactic activity on VSMC (Fig. 1A), and is also a potent inducer of VSMC proliferation (Fig. 1B).
Accordingly, Fig. 2A shows that heme (10 mM) induces a strong ROS production after 1 h of incubation with VSMC.
On the other hand, heme induced HO-1 expression in VSMC (Suppl. Fig. 2).
Among the redox-sensitive molecules, ERK-2, a member of MAPK family, is of crucial importance to VSMC proliferation and migration [21].
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If you find BEL Commons useful in your work, please consider citing: Hoyt, C. T., Domingo-Fernández, D., & Hofmann-Apitius, M. (2018). BEL Commons: an environment for exploration and analysis of networks encoded in Biological Expression Language. Database, 2018(3), 1–11.