Traditional Chinese Medicine extracts exert angiogenic and protective effects towards human endothelial progenitor cells: from cellular function to molecular pathway

Despite intense research efforts, the repair of large bone defects is still not satisfactory and remains a major challenge in Orthopaedic Surgery. In this context bone tissue engineering has emerged as a promising strategy. However, one of the fundamental principles underlying tissue engineering approaches is that newly formed tissue must maintain sufficient vascularization to support its growth. Thus an active blood vessel network is an essential pre-requisite for scaffold constructs to integrate within existing host tissue. Currently, great efforts are made to address this problem employing transplantation of vascular cells and loading of appropriate biological factors. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) are a heterogeneous subpopulation of bone marrow mononuclear progenitor cells with potential for differentiation to the endothelial lineage and thus vasculogenic capacity. However, clinical studies reported that with the increase of age, increased susceptibility to apoptosis and accelerated senescence may contribute to the numerical and functional impairments observed in EPCs, which may lead to a reduced angiogenic capacity and an increased risk of vascular disease. Hence attention has increasingly been paid to enhance mobilization and differentiation of EPCs for therapeutic purposes. A large body of evidence indicates that in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) a plethora of herbs and herbal extracts are effective in the treatment of vascular diseases such as chronic wounds, diabetic retinopathy and rheumatoid arthritis. Thus, it seems rational to explore these medicinal plants as potential sources of novel angiomodulatory factors. In this thesis we demonstrated that treatment with TCM herbal extracts promote cell growth, cell migration, cell-matrix and capillary-like tube formation of BM-EPCs. Among these TCM extracts, Salidroside (SAL) and Icariin (ICAR) incubation increased VEGF and nitric oxide secretion, which in turn mediated the enhancement of angiogenic differentiation of BM-EPCs. A mechanic evaluation provided evidence that SAL stimulates the phosphorylation of Akt, mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and ribosomal protein S6 kinase (p70S6K), as well as phosphorylated ERK1/2, which is associated with the cell migration and tube formation. Furthermore, a pilot in vivo study showed that SAL has the potential to enhance bone formation in a murine femoral critical-size bone defects model. Another new finding of the present study is that hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)-induced cytotoxicity is counteracted by TCM extracts. We found that SAL, Salvianolic acid B (SalB) and ICAR significantly abrogated H2O2-induced cell apoptosis, reduced the intracellular level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate-oxidase (NADPH) expression, and restored the mitochondrial membrane potential of BM-EPCs. Our data suggest that this protective effect of SalB is mediated by the activation of mTOR, p70S6K, 4EBP1, and by the suppression of MKK3/6-p38 MAPK-ATF2 and ERK1/2 signaling pathways after H2O2 stress. In addition, the investigation also demonstrates that ICAR owns the ability to inhibit apoptotic and autophagic programmed cell death via restoring the loss of mTOR and attenuation of ATF2 activity upon oxidative stress. Based on the outcomes of the present work, we propose SAL, SalB and ICAR as novel proanigiogenic and cytoprotective therapeutic agents with potential applications in the fields of systemic and site-specific tissue regeneration including ischaemic disease and extended musculoskeletal tissue defects