CORM-401 prevents hemolysate-induced up-regulation of proinflammatory pathways in endothelial cells. HUVECs cultured in a flow system were pre-treated or not with 100 μM CORM-401 for 1 hour before being exposed to either serum only, hemolysate alone, or hemolysate plus 100 μM CORM-401 (recapitulated in Table 2). The infusion flow rate was adjusted to reach a shear stress of 1 dyne·cm−2. Cells in indicated conditions were harvested and gene expression profiles were analyzed by messenger RNA sequencing, as described in supplemental Data (Table 2). (A) Heat maps of normalized read counts of differentially expressed genes in endothelial cells exposed to hemolysate alone compared with hemolysate plus CORM-401 treatment (only those having fold change >1.5 or less than −1.5, and FDR P value < .05 are represented). (B) Main canonical pathways (z score) in hemolysate- vs serum-treated HUVECs (red dots) and in cells exposed to hemolysate plus CORM-401 treatment vs hemolysate alone (green dots). Large red dots: z score > 2, large green dots: z score less than −2: considered significant to predict upregulation or downregulation pathway, respectively.
