Abstract
Macrophages are key responders of inflammation and are closely related with oxidative stress. Activated macrophages can enhance oxygen depletion, which causes an overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and leads to further excessive inflammatory response and tissue damage. Agmatine, an endogenous metabolite of L-arginine, has recently been shown to have neuroprotective effects based on its antioxidant properties. However, the antioxidant effects of agmatine in peripheral tissues and cells, especially macrophages, remain unclear. In this study we explored the role of agmatine in mediating antioxidant effects in RAW 264.7 cells and studied its antioxidant mechanism. Our data demonstrate that agmatine is an activator of Nrf2 signaling that markedly enhances Nrf2 nuclear translocation, increases nuclear Nrf2 protein level, up-regulates the expression of the Nrf2 downstream effector HO-1, and attenuates ROS generation induced by Lipopolysaccharide (LPS). We further demonstrated that the agmatine-induced activation of Nrf2 is likely through the PI3K/Akt pathway. LY294002, a specific PI3K/Akt inhibitor, abolished agmatine-induced HO-1 up-regulation and ROS suppression significantly. Inhibiting HO-1 pathway significantly attenuated the antioxidant effect of agmatine which the products of HO-1 enzymatic activity contributed to. Furthermore, the common membrane receptors of agmatine were evaluated, revealing that α2-adrenoceptor, I1-imidazoline receptor or I2-imidazoline receptor are not required by the antioxidant properties of agmatine. Taken together, our findings revealed that agmatine has antioxidant activity against LPS-induced ROS accumulation in RAW 264.7 cells involving HO-1 expression induced by Nrf2 via PI3K/Akt pathway activation.
Highlights
Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a major component of bacterial cell walls, can stimulate inflammatory responses and induce reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in various cell types [1]
Blocking experiments were conducted to reveal the importance of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) pathway in the protective properties of agmatine.As shown in Fig 7B, agmatine suppressed LPS-induced ROS generation to a great degree; this suppression was significantly abolished when the cells were pretreated with HO-1 inhibitor ZnPP. These results suggested that agmatine exhibits its antioxidant effects on inflammatory macrophages mainly through a HO-1-dependent manner
In terms of its underlying mechanism of action, previous reports have suggested that agmatine inhibits the production of Nitric Oxide (NO) by decreasing the levels of nitric oxide synthase (NOS)-2 protein in macrophages, which suggests a molecular basis for the anti-inflammatory actions of agmatine [24]
Summary
Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a major component of bacterial cell walls, can stimulate inflammatory responses and induce reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in various cell types [1]. In immunocytes, such as macrophages, ROS accumulation promotes the overexpression of proinflammatory cytokines, which aggravates inflammatory responses and does harm to local tissue [2]. HO1 is a member of the intracellular phase II enzyme family, which are ubiquitously expressed at low levels in resting conditions, and highly up-regulated by numerous stress stimuli [11], such as LPS and Heme Several kinases such as phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), c-Jun N-terminal kinase1/2 (JNK1/2), and extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) have been confirmed to promote HO-1 expression. It contributes to the anti-inflammatory activity of cells and tissues [14]
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