Background: Myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is closely related with cardiovascular diseases; however, the underlying pathogenic mechanisms remain not fully understood. This study sought to investigate the effect and mechanisms of PIM3 implicated in myocardial I/R injury using a rat model of myocardial I/R injury and a cell model of oxygen-glucose deprivation/reoxygenation (OGD/R) induction.
Methods: The morphology changes were detected by HE staining while cell viability was accessed by the CCK-8 method. The characteristics of ferroptosis were evaluated by ROS production, MDA content, SOD level, iron content, TfR1, FTH1, and GPX4 expression.
Results: Myocardial I/R operation increased myocardial tissue damage in rats, while OGD/R treatment reduced the viability of H9c2 cells. Both myocardial I/R operation and OGD/R stimulation increased ferroptosis, as demonstrated by elevated ROS, MDA, iron content, decreased SOD level, upregulation of TfR1, and downregulation of FTH1 and GPX4. Additionally, myocardial I/R modeling or OGD/R treatment enhanced the expression of PIM3. Silencing of PIM3 inhibited ferroptosis, which resulted in alleviated myocardial I/R-induced damage and improved H9c2 cell survival.
Conclusions: Our findings highlight a vital role of PIM3 in myocardial I/R injury, indicating that PIM3-targeting ferroptosis may be a promising target for the development of novel therapies of myocardial I/R injury-associated diseases.
Keywords: Cell death; Ferroptosis; Mechanism; Myocardial I/R injury; PIM3.
© 2023. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to The Genetics Society of Korea.