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This study was undertaken to determine whether and how advanced glycation end products (AGE), senescent macroproteins accumulated in various tissues under hyperglycemic states, cause angiogenesis, the principal vascular derangement in diabetic microangiopathy. We first prepared AGE-bovine serum albumin (BSA) and anti-AGE antiserum using AGE-RNase A. Then AGE-BSA was administered to human skin microvascular endothelial cells in culture, and their growth was examined. The AGE-BSA, but not nonglycated BSA, was found to induce a statistically significant increase in the number of viable endothelial cells as well as their synthesis of DNA. The increase in DNA synthesis by AGE-BSA was abolished by anti-AGE antibodies. AGE-BSA also stimulated the tube formation of endothelial cells on Matrigel. We obtained the following evidence that it is vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) that mainly mediates the angiogenic activities of AGE. Glucose and other reducing sugars can react nonenzymatically with the amino groups of proteins to form reversible Schiff bases and, then, Amadori products. These early glycation products undergo further complex reactions such as rearrangement, dehydration, and condensation to become irreversibly crosslinked, heterogeneous fluorescent derivatives termed advanced glycation end products (AGE) 1 (1). The formation and accumulation of AGE in various tissues have been known to progress during normal aging and at an extremely accelerated rate in diabetes mellitus. This has been implicated in the development of diabetic micro-and macro-vascular complications (1), which may account for the disabilities and high mortality rate in patients with this disease (2).Microvessels are composed of only two types of cells, endothelial cells and pericytes, and have been known to show both functional and structural abnormalities during prolonged diabetic exposure, resulting in the deleterious effects on the organs that they supply (3-5). Using pericyte-endothelial cell co-culture systems, we have shown previously that pericytes can not only regulate the growth but also preserve the prostacyclin-producing ability and protect against lipid peroxide-induced injury of endothelial cells (6). This has provided a basis for understanding how diabetic retinopathy develops consequent to "pericyte loss," the earliest histopathological hallmark in diabetic retinopathy (5, 7).Recently, we have found that AGE exert a growth inhibitory effect and a cell type-specific immediate toxicity on pericytes through interactions with their receptor for AGE (RAGE), a cell surface receptor belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily (8), and have proposed a novel mechanism for pericyte loss (9). The AGE-induced, RAGE-mediated decrease in pericyte number would then indirectly cause angiogenesis (6,9).In the present study, we investigated the effects of AGE on the growth and tube formation of human skin microvascular endothelial cells, the key steps of angiogenesis. We demonstrate that AGE exert angiogenic activities directly on microvasc...

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An inhibitor of blood coagulation, a new protein with an apparent molecular weight of 34,000 and an isoelectric point of 4.9, was purified from human placental tissue by EDTA extraction. Five cDNA clones were isolated from the human placental lambda gt11 cDNA library using the mouse monoclonal antibody raised against the coagulation inhibitor as the probe. The longest insert consists of 1,566 nucleotides, and contains 960 nucleotides entirely encoding the 320 amino acids of the inhibitor, and a poly A tail. The deduced amino acid sequence was corroborated by chemical analyses of the protein. The entire amino acid sequence shows homology to those of lipocortin I, lipocortin II, and endonexin-related proteins. The cDNA for the inhibitor was expressed in Escherichia coli under the regulation of the trc promotor of the plasmid pKK233-2. The resulting recombinant protein manifested inhibitory activities against both blood coagulation and phospholipase A2 activity, as did the coagulation inhibitor isolated from human placenta.

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