Cardiac aorta-derived extracellular matrix scaffold enhances critical mediators of angiogenesis in isoproterenol-induced myocardial infarction mice

An incapability to improve lost cardiac muscle caused by acute ischemic injury remains the most important deficiency of current treatments to prevent heart failure. We investigated whether cardiomyocytes culturing on cardiac aorta-derived extracellular matrix scaffold has advantageous effects on cardiomyocytes survival and angiogenesis biomarkers’ expression. Ten male NMRI mice were randomly divided into two groups: (1) control (healthy mice) and (2) myocardial infarction (MI)-induced model group (Isoproterenol/subcutaneously injection/single dose of 85 mg/kg). Two days after isoproterenol injection, all animals were sacrificed to isolate cardiomyocytes from myocardium tissues. The fresh thoracic aorta was obtained from male NMRI mice and decellularized using 4% sodium deoxycholate and 2000 kU DNase-I treatments. Control and MI-derived cardiomyocytes were seeded on decellularized cardiac aorta (DCA) considered three-dimensional (3D) cultures. To compare, the isolated cardiomyocytes from control and MI groups were also cultured as a two-dimensional (2D) culture system for 14 days. The cell viability was examined by MTT assay. The expression levels of Hif-1α and VEGF genes and VEGFR1 protein were tested by real-time PCR and western blotting, respectively. Moreover, the amount of VEGF protein was evaluated in the conditional media of the 2D and 3D systems. The oxidative stress was assessed via MDA assay. Hif-1α and VEGF genes were downregulated in MI groups compared to controls. However, the resulting data showed that decellularized cardiac aorta matrices positively affect the expression of Hif-1α and VEGF genes. The expression level of VEGFR1 protein was significantly (p ≤ 0.01) upregulated in both MI and healthy cell groups cultured on decellularized cardiac aorta matrices as a 3D system compared to the MI cell group cultured in the 2D systems. Furthermore, MDA concentration significantly decreased in 3D-cultured cells (MI and healthy cell groups) rather than the 2D-cultured MI group (p ≤ 0.015). The findings suggest that cardiac aorta-derived extracellular scaffold by preserving VEGF, improving the cell viability, and stimulating angiogenesis via upregulating Hif-1α, VEGF, and VEGFR1 in cardiomyocytes could be considered as a potential approach along with another therapeutic method to reduce the complications of myocardial infarction and control the progressive pathological conditions related to MI. [Image: see text]