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Updated: Jun 27, 2026

In vitro Assessment of Myocardial Protection following Hypothermia-Preconditioning in a Human Cardiac Myocytes Model
Published on: October 27, 2020
Acidic preconditioning protects endothelial cells against apoptosis through p38- and Akt-dependent Bcl-xL
Jan-Paul Flacke1, Sanjeev Kumar, Sawa Kostin
1Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany.
Abstract:
To analyze the underlying cellular mechanisms of adaptation to ischemia-induced apoptosis through short acidic pretreatment, i.e. acidic preconditioning (APC), Wistar rat coronary endothelial cells (EC) were exposed for 40 min to acidosis (pH 6.4) followed by a 14 h recovery period (pH 7.4) and finally treated for 2 h with simulated in vitro ischemia (glucose-free anoxia at pH 6.4). APC led to a transient activation of p38 and Akt kinases, but not of JNK and ERK1/2 kinases, which was accompanied by significant reduction of the apoptotic cell number, caspase-12/-3 cleavage and Bcl-xL overexpression. These effects of APC were completely abolished by prevention of Akt- or p38-phosphorylation during APC. Furthermore, knock-down of Bcl-xL by siRNA-transfection also abolished the anti-apoptotic effect of APC. Therefore, APC leads to protection of EC against ischemic apoptosis by activation of Akt and p38 followed by overexpression of Bcl-xL, which is a key anti-apoptotic mechanism of APC.
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