Calcium regulation of tissue plasminogen activator and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 release from cultured human vascular endothelial cells

Abstract

Tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) produced by vascular endothelial cells converts plasminogen to plasmin which degrades fibrin. Since t-PA activity is greatly potentiated in the presence of fibrin (1,2), the activator is implicated in intravascular fibrinolysis. On the other hand, endothelial cells also produce plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) (3). The inhibitor associated with vascular endothelium rapidly inhibits t-PA, while that released into the liquid phase has a little anti-activator activity (4). However, clinical studies have shown that elevation of plasma PAI-1 level is a risk factor of thrombosis (5,6). It is thus suggested that the balance between t-PA and PAI-1 is important for the regulation of fibrinolysis. The release of t-PA and PAI-1 from vascular endothelial cells is regulated by physiological factors including thrombin (3,7), histamine (8), vasoconstrictor peptide endothelins (9,10) and cytokines (11). In addition, the regulation of the t-PA release and that of the PAI-1 release are not necessarily coupled. It has been shown that activated protein kinase C and cyclic AMP are involved in the stimulation and suppression, respectively, of the endothelial t-PA and PAI-1 production (12,13). However, the role of intracellular calcium in the regulation of endothelial t-PA and PAI-1 release has remained to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effect of calcium ionophore A23187 on the release of t-PA antigen (t-PA:Ag) and PAI-1 antigen (PAI-1:Ag) from cultured vascular endothelial cells derived from human umbilical vein.