bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.17.207985; this version posted July 17, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 1 Increasing heart vascularisation after myocardial infarction using brain natriuretic peptide stimulation of endothelial and WT1+ epicardium- derived cells. Na Li, Stéphanie Rignault-Clerc, Christelle Bielmann, Anne-Charlotte Bon-Mathier, Tamara Déglise, Alexia Carboni, Mégane Ducrest, Nathalie Rosenblatt-Velin* Division of Angiology, Heart and Vessel Department, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois and University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Short Title: BNP improves heart neovascularisation Address for correspondance: * Nathalie Rosenblatt-Velin, PhD CHUV, Division d’Angiologie Département Cœur-Vaisseaux Institut de Physiologie, Bugnon 7a, 1005 Lausanne, Switzerland Phone: +41 79 556 76 68 Fax: +41 21 692 55 95 Email:
[email protected] bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.17.207985; this version posted July 17, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 2 ABSTRACT Brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) treatment increases heart function and decreases heart dilation after myocardial infarction. Here, we investigated whether part of the cardioprotective effect of BNP in infarcted hearts related to improved neovascularisation. Infarcted mice were treated with saline or BNP for 10 days. BNP treatment increased vascularisation and the number of endothelial cells in the infarct border and remote zones of infarcted hearts. Endothelial cell lineage tracing showed that BNP directly stimulated the proliferation of resident mature endothelial cells in both areas of the infarcted hearts, via NPR-A binding and p38 MAP kinase activation.