Purpose

To develop a small animal model of controlled aortic intimal injury with ultrasound imaging guidance.

Materials and Methods

Via carotid artery cut down, we advanced a custom-made micro-catheter/angled-metal-device system to damage the intima of the ascending aortas of 20 Sprague Dawley (SD) rats and 10 JCR atherosclerotic rats. This minimally invasive endovascular procedure was monitored by a clinical ultrasound imaging system. Injured aortas were harvested for histologic confirmations using a grading system: Grade I with intima injury, Grade II with injury to media, and Grade III with injury through the entire aortic wall. Neointimal reactions at the injury site were compared by calculating the ratio of intimal to medial thickness among different animal groups at various survival times (week 1, weeks 2–3 and weeks 4–7).

Results

Clear visualization of the architectures of the heart, great vessels and the exact location of the angled-metal-device by ultrasound imaging ensured consistent intimal damage of the aorta. Histopathology confirmed that most of the aortic injures were classified as Grade I. There was no significant difference between the two rat groups. Analysis on pathophysiological reactions at the injury sites revealed increased thickening of neointimal hyperplasia as animal survival times extended from week 1 to weeks 4–7 after the aortic interventions.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates the feasibility of using clinical ultrasound imaging to precisely guide the creation of controlled aortic intimal injury in rats, which may become a useful tool to facilitate research involving the prevention and treatment of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Background

A characteristic feature of atherosclerosis is its diffuse involvement of arteries across the entire human body. Bone marrow cells (BMC) can be simultaneously transferred with therapeutic genes and magnetic resonance (MR) contrast agents prior to their transplantation. Via systemic transplantation, these dual-transferred BMCs can circulate through the entire body and thus function as vehicles to carry genes/contrast agents to multiple atherosclerosis. This study was to evaluate the feasibility of using in vivo MR imaging (MRI) to monitor BMC-mediated interleukin-10 (IL-10) gene therapy of atherosclerosis.

Methodology

For in vitro confirmation, donor mouse BMCs were transduced by IL-10/lentivirus, and then labeled with a T2-MR contrast agent (Feridex). For in vivo validation, atherosclerotic apoE−/− mice were intravenously transplanted with IL-10/Feridex-BMCs (Group I, n = 5) and Feridex-BMCs (Group II, n = 5), compared to controls without BMC transplantation (Group III, n = 5). The cell migration to aortic atherosclerotic lesions was monitored in vivo using 3.0T MRI with subsequent histology correlation. To evaluate the therapeutic effect of BMC-mediated IL-10 gene therapy, we statistically compared the normalized wall indexes (NWI) of ascending aortas amongst different mouse groups with various treatments.

Principal Findings

Of in vitro experiments, simultaneous IL-10 transduction and Feridex labeling of BMCs were successfully achieved, with high cell viability and cell labeling efficiency, as well as IL-10 expression efficiency (≥90%). Of in vivo experiments, MRI of animal groups I and II showed signal voids within the aortic walls due to Feridex-created artifacts from the migrated BMCs in the atherosclerotic plaques, which were confirmed by histology. Histological quantification showed that the mean NWI of group I was significantly lower than those of group II and group III (P<0.05).

Conclusion

This study has confirmed the possibility of using MRI to track, in vivo, IL-10/Feridex-BMCs recruited to atherosclerotic lesions, where IL-10 genes function to prevent the progression of atherosclerosis.