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Updated: Jul 3, 2026

Isolation of Primary Patient-specific Aortic Smooth Muscle Cells and Semiquantitative Real-time Contraction Measurements In Vitro
Published on: February 15, 2022
Statins activate GATA-6 and induce differentiated vascular smooth muscle cells
Hiromichi Wada1, Mitsuru Abe, Koh Ono
1Division of Translational Research, National Hospital Organization Kyoto Medical Center, 1-1 Mukaihata-cho, Fukakusa, Fushimi-ku, Kyoto 612-8555, Japan.
Abstract:
The beneficial effects of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase inhibitors (statins) beyond cholesterol lowering involve their direct actions on vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). However, the effects of statins on phenotypic modulation of VSMCs are unknown. We herein show that simvastatin (Sm) and atorvastatin (At) inhibited DNA synthesis in human aortic VSMCs dose-dependently, while cell toxicity was not observed below the concentration of 1 microM of Sm or 100 nM of At. Stimulating proliferative VSMCs with Sm or At induced the expression of SM-alpha-actin and SM-MHC, highly specific markers of differentiated phenotype. Sm up-regulated the binding activity of GATA-6 to SM-MHC GATA site and activated the transfected SM-MHC promoter in proliferative VSMCs, while mutating the GATA-6 binding site abolished this activation. Geranylgeranylpyrophosphate (10 microM), an inhibitor of Rho family proteins, abolished the statin-mediated induction of the differentiated phenotype in VSMCs. These findings suggest that statins activate GATA-6 and induce differentiated VSMCs.
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