Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 6 pp 5384—5398
N-Propargyl caffeate amide (PACA) prevents cardiac fibrosis in experimental myocardial infarction by promoting pro-resolving macrophage polarization
- 1 School of Chinese Medicine, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
- 2 The University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Institute of Research and Innovation (HKU-SIRI), Shenzhen, China
Received: June 24, 2019 Accepted: January 24, 2020 Published: March 23, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102959How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Cheng et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Macrophages control the initiation and resolution of cardiac fibrosis in post-infarction cardiac remodeling. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether N-propargyl caffeate amide (PACA) could suppress myocardial fibrosis via regulating macrophage polarization. By using rat model of isoproterenol-induced myocardial fibrosis, we discovered that PACA could reduce cardiac fibrosis in a dose-dependent manner. To elucidate the anti-fibrotic mechanisms, we examined whether PACA affected pro-inflammatory M1 and pro-resolving macrophage biomarkers in macrophage polarization. As result, PACA reduced the expression of pro-inflammatory M1 biomarkers (e.g., iNOS, TNF-α, CXCL10, IL-6, CCL2 and CD80) while increased the expression of pro-resolving M2a biomarkers (e.g., IL-10, arginase-1, FZZ1, YM-1 and CD163) in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 macrophages. PACA also suppressed the elevation of M1 biomarker ED1 in the early phase but up-regulated the expression of pro-resolving biomarker ED2 in the later phase. Moreover, PACA reduced the expression of pro-fibrotic TGF-β1 and PDGF-α while maintained or even increased the production of pro-apoptotic MMP-13, MMP-9 and TRAIL. Importantly, mechanistic studies revealed that PACA might promote the switch of macrophage polarization towards a pro-resolving macrophage phenotype via activating PPAR-γ pathway. Taken together, this study suggested that PACA might be a drug candidate for preventing cardiac fibrosis in myocardial infarction.