A novel in vitro ischemia/reperfusion injury model

The reperfusion of blood flow occurred in a number of conditions such as stroke and organ transplantation immensely augments tissue injury and causes more severe damage than prolonged ischemia. In the present study, we designed a novel double-layer parallel-plate flow chamber (PPFC) to develop an in vitro ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury model and examined the effects of I/R on inflammatory responses in human microvascular endothelial cells (HMEC-1). The expression of pro-inflammatory mediators, such as interleukin-6 (IL-6), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), E-selectin, and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) in HMEC-1 was measured by quantitative real-time RT-PCR. The cells were also pre-treated with antioxidant pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (PDTC) to verify involvement of an oxidative mechanism in I/R injury in vitro. The morphological changes and attenuated expression of pro-inflammatory mediators were observed in HMCE-1 exposed to the physiological flow. In contrast, I/R markedly and significantly up-regulated expression of pro-inflammatory mediators in HMEC-1. Additionally, pretreatment with PDTC significantly reduced I/R-mediated overexpression of pro-inflammatory mediators. The data from the present study provide evidence demonstrating that our newly designed PPFC can be utilized as an effective in vitro cell culture model system to develop new drugs specifically targeting against ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury.