ELA-11 protects the heart against oxidative stress injury induced apoptosis through ERK/MAPK and PI3K/AKT signaling pathways

Increasing evidence revealed that apoptosis and oxidative stress injury were associated with the pathophysiology of doxorubicin (DOX)-induced myocardial injury. ELABELA (ELA) is a newly identified peptide with 32 amino acids, can reduce hypertension with exogenous infusion. However, the effect of 11-residue furn-cleaved fragment (ELA-11) is still unclear. We first administrated ELA-11 in DOX-injured mice and measured the cardiac function and investigated the effect of ELA-11 in vivo. We found that ELA-11 alleviated heart injury induced by DOX and inhibited cardiac tissues from apoptosis. In vitro, ELA-11 regulated the sensitivity towards apoptosis induced by oxidative stress with DOX treatment through PI3K/AKT and ERK/MAPK signaling pathway. Similarly, ELA-11 inhibited oxidative stress-induced apoptosis in cobalt chloride (CoCl2)-injured cardiomyocytes. Moreover, ELA-11 protected cardiomyocyte by interacting with Apelin receptor (APJ) by using 4-oxo-6-((pyrimidin-2-ylthio) methyl)-4H-pyran-3-yl 4-nitrobenzoate (ML221). Hence, our results indicated a protective role of ELA-11 in oxidative stress-induced apoptosis in DOX-induced myocardial injury.