Published Online
on April 4, 2005

A more recent version of this article appeared on April 12, 2005

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Submitted on August 24, 2004
Revised on November 16, 2004
Accepted on December 3, 2004

Novel Cardioprotective Role of a Small Heat-Shock Protein, Hsp20, Against Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury

Guo-Chang Fan PhD, Xiaoping Ren MD, Jiang Qian MD, Qunying Yuan MD, Persoulla Nicolaou BS, Yang Wang MD, W. Keith Jones PhD, Guoxiang Chu MD, PhD, and Evangelia G. Kranias PhD^*

From the Department of Pharmacology and Cell Biophysics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: litsa.kranias{at}uc.edu.

Background--Heat-shock proteins (Hsps) have been shown to render cardioprotection from stress-induced injury; however, little is known about the role of another small heat-shock protein, Hsp20, which regulates activities of vasodilation and platelet aggregation, in cardioprotection against ischemia injury. We recently reported that increased expression of Hsp20 in cardiomyocytes was associated with improved contraction and protection against -agonist-induced apoptosis.

Methods and Results--To investigate whether overexpression of Hsp20 exerts protective effects in both ex vivo and in vivo ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury, we generated a transgenic (TG) mouse model with cardiac-specific overexpression of Hsp20 (10-fold). TG and wild-type (WT) hearts were then subjected to global no-flow I/R (45 minutes/120 minutes) using the Langendorff preparation. TG hearts exhibited improved recovery of contractile performance over the whole reperfusion period. This improvement was accompanied by a 2-fold decrease in lactate dehydrogenase released from the TG hearts. The extent of infarction and apoptotic cell death was also significantly decreased, which was associated with increased protein ratio of Bcl-2/Bax and reduced caspase-3 activity in TG hearts. Furthermore, in vivo experiments of 30-minute myocardial ischemia, via coronary artery occlusion, followed by 24-hour reperfusion, showed that the infarct region-to-risk region ratio was 8.1±1.1% in TG hearts (n=7), compared with 19.5±2.1% in WT hearts (n=11, P<0.001).

Conclusions--Our data demonstrate that increased Hsp20 expression in the heart protects against I/R injury, resulting in improved recovery of cardiac function and reduced infarction. Thus, Hsp20 may constitute a new therapeutic target for ischemic heart diseases.

Key words: ischemia • reperfusion • myocardial infarction • proteins

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