Abstract
Background and Purpose: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, mainly due to an increasing prevalence of atherosclerosis characterized by inflammatory plaques. Plaques with high levels of macrophage infiltration are considered "vulnerable" while those that do not have significant inflammation are considered stable; cathepsin protease activity is highly elevated in macrophages of vulnerable plaques and contributes to plaque instability. Establishing novel tools for non-invasive molecular imaging of macrophages in plaques could aid in preclinical studies and evaluation of therapeutics. Furthermore, compounds that reduce the macrophage content within plaques should ultimately impact care for this disease. Methods: We have applied quenched fluorescent cathepsin activity-based probes (ABPs) to a murine atherosclerosis model and evaluated their use for in vivo imaging using fluorescent molecular tomography (FMT), as well as ex vivo fluorescence imaging and fluorescent microscopy. Additionally, freshly dissected human carotid plaques were treated with our potent cathepsin inhibitor and macrophage apoptosis was evaluated by fluorescent microscopy. Results: We demonstrate that our ABPs accurately detect murine atherosclerotic plaques non-invasively, identifying cathepsin activity within plaque macrophages. In addition, our cathepsin inhibitor selectively induced cell apoptosis of 55%±10% of the macrophage within excised human atherosclerotic plaques. Conclusions: Cathepsin ABPs present a rapid diagnostic tool for macrophage detection in atherosclerotic plaque. Our inhibitor confirms cathepsin-targeting as a promising approach to treat atherosclerotic plaque inflammation.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0160522 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Dr. Michael McConnell has the following competing interests: previous cardiovascular MRI research grant from GE Healthcare, pre-clinical research grant from Tiara Pharmaceuticals, currently on partial leave from Stanford and employed at Verily Life Sciences. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Abd-Elrahman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
