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GDF11 prevents the formation of thoracic aortic dissection in mice: Promotion of contractile transition of aortic SMCs.

ABSTRACT: Thoracic aortic dissection (TAD) is an aortic disease associated with dysregulated extracellular matrix composition and de-differentiation of vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs). Growth Differentiation Factor 11 (GDF11) is a member of transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) superfamily associated with cardiovascular diseases. The present study attempted to investigate the expression of GDF11 in TAD and its effects on aortic SMC phenotype transition. GDF11 level was found lower in the ascending thoracic aortas of TAD patients than healthy aortas. The mouse model of TAD was established by β-aminopropionitrile monofumarate (BAPN) combined with angiotensin II (Ang II). The expression of GDF11 was also decreased in thoracic aortic tissues accompanied with increased inflammation, arteriectasis and elastin degradation in TAD mice. Administration of GDF11 mitigated these aortic lesions and improved the survival rate of mice. Exogenous GDF11 and adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV-2)-mediated GDF11 overexpression increased the expression of contractile proteins including ACTA2, SM22α and myosin heavy chain 11 (MYH11) and decreased synthetic markers including osteopontin and fibronectin 1 (FN1), indicating that GDF11 might inhibit SMC phenotype transition and maintain its contractile state. Moreover, GDF11 inhibited the production of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2, 3, 9 in aortic SMCs. The canonical TGF-β (Smad2/3) signalling was enhanced by GDF11, while its inhibition suppressed the inhibitory effects of GDF11 on SMC de-differentiation and MMP production in vitro. Therefore, we demonstrate that GDF11 may contribute to TAD alleviation via inhibiting inflammation and MMP activity, and promoting the transition of aortic SMCs towards a contractile phenotype, which provides a therapeutic target for TAD.

SUBMITTER: Ren K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8107100 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Acute aortic dissection (AAD) is one of the major aortic diseases that occurs without a preceding symptom and often results in sudden death. Despite the recent advances in cardiovascular medicine, AAD remains a serious problem because its molecular pathogenesis is largely unknown. In this paper, we report our serendipitous discovery that stress-induced expression of tenascin C (TNC), a member of matricellular proteins, is the protection mechanism of aorta to prevent AAD. The aortic wall stress imposed by the aortic stiffening and the angiotensin II infusion caused the strong induction of TNC in wild type mouse aorta without gross morphological changes. While TNC knockout mice at the baseline showed no morphological, histological or biomechanical abnormalities of aorta, deletion of TNC gene rendered the aorta susceptible to AAD upon the aortic stress. The stressed TNC-null aorta showed the loss of the tensile strength due to the insufficient expression of extracellular matrix proteins and the exaggerated proinflammatory response before the onset of AAD. Therefore, TNC works as a stress-activated molecular damper both by reinforcing the tensile strength and by limiting the excessive proinflammatory response in aorta. Thus far, the molecular event that leads to the AAD development has been unclear because of the unpredictable nature of the AAD onset. This study sheds light on the previously unrecognized tissue protection mechanism that converts the potentially harmful stress response into the active reinforcement of the aorta, of which failure leads to the development of AAD. Although TNC is expressed in various tissues upon the mechanical and proinflammatory stimuli, its role has long been a mystery. Our data uncovered the adaptive role of TNC in aorta that must be resilient to the continuous hemodynamic and humoral stress for lifetime. We used periaortic application of 0.5 M CaCl2 to the infrarenal aorta or either wild type (WT) or tenascin C knockout (TNC-KO) mice to create the mouse model for stiffened aorta and infused the mice with AngII (1 µg/min/kg) for 1 week to apply the pathological stress on aorta (Ca+AngII). Mice were then killed with an overdose of pentobarbital to obtain the tissue samples. The suprarenal aortic samples, from the level of right renal artery to 10 mm above the right renal artery, and infrarenal aortic samples, from the level of left renal artery to 10 mm below the left renal artery, were collected and kept in RNAlater (Qiagen) until the extraction of total RNA using RNeasy (Qiagen). We obtained the RNA samples from 8 mice with Ca+AngII treatment and 5 mice without Ca+AngII treatment for each genotype. We pooled the RNA samples with the identical experimental condition to perform the transcriptome analysis using Mouse Genome 430 2.0 (Affymetrix). We obtained suprarenal aortic smooth muscle cells (ASMCs) from TNC-KO mice by enzymatic dispersion and cultured them in Dulbecco's modified Eagle medium (DMEM) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum. We cultured TNC-KO ASMCs in the presence or absence of exogenous TNC (10 µg/mL) and stimulated the cells with 10 ng/mL TNF-alpha for 24 h before obtaining total RNA using RNeasy. We used 3 independent ASMC cultures without the exogenous TNC and 4 independent cultures with the exogenous TNC. We hybridized each of the RNA samples individually to Mouse Genome 430 2.0 Array (Affymetrix).

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GDF11 prevents the formation of thoracic aortic dissection in mice: Promotion of contractile transition of aortic SMCs.

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