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VEGF165 and angiopoietin-1 decreased myocardium infarct size through phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase and Bcl-2 pathways

Gene Therapy volume 12, pages 196–202 (2005)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 09 March 2005

Abstract

Angiogenic growth factors, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and angiopoietin-1 (Ang1) could decrease myocardial infarct size, which was assumed to be related with newly formed capillaries. We doubted that these capillaries could do this solely and the potential protective mechanisms of VEGF and Ang1 on myocardium need to be evaluated. Three types of adenoviruses encoding human VEGF165 (Ad-VEGF165), human angiopoietin-1 (Ad-Ang1) and green fluorescent protein (Ad-GFP, as a parallel control) were constructed. Experiments were taken both in vitro and in vivo. As in vitro, the antiapoptosis effect of VEGF165, Ang1 and VEGF165+Ang1 on cardiac myoblasts was observed, which seemed to be related with the activation of phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase and Bcl-2 pathways. As in vivo, adenoviruses were intramyocardially injected immediately after the ligation of the left anterior descending coronay arteries in rats. The results showed positive effect of VEGF165, Ang1 and VEGF165+Ang1 on decreasing the myocardial infarct size at the 7th day. Myocardial PI-3K activity and Bcl-2 expression were elevated relatively at the 3rd day. The protective effect of VEGF165 and Ang1 on the myocardium may broaden their functional research and contribute to their clinical use in the future.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Drs Williams and Race Kao at Department of Surgery, James H Quillen College of Medicine, ETSU for their kindly advice and support. We also thank the teachers and students of the Institute of Molecular Medicine in Nanjing University for their kindly help in the daily work.

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  1. Department of Cardiology, the first affiliated hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China

    L Zhou, W Ma, Z Yang, F Zhang, L Lu, Z Ding, B Ding, T Ha, X Gao & C Li

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Zhou, L., Ma, W., Yang, Z. et al. VEGF165 and angiopoietin-1 decreased myocardium infarct size through phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase and Bcl-2 pathways. Gene Ther 12, 196–202 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.gt.3302416

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