Baocai Fu’s scientific contributions

Endothelial dysfunction is the key player in the development and progression of vascular events. Oxidative stress is involved in endothelial injury. Rosmarinic acid (RA) is a natural polyphenol with antioxidative, antiapoptotic, and anti-inflammatory properties. The present study investigates the protective effect of RA on endothelial dysfunction induced by hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ). Compared with endothelium-denuded aortic rings, the endothelium significantly alleviated the decrease of vasoconstrictive reactivity to PE and KCl induced by H 2 O 2 . H 2 O 2 pretreatment significantly injured the vasodilative reactivity to ACh in endothelium-intact aortic rings in a concentration-dependent manner. RA individual pretreatment had no obvious effect on the vasoconstrictive reaction to PE and KCl, while its cotreatment obviously mitigated the endothelium-dependent relaxation impairments and the oxidative stress induced by H 2 O 2 . The RA cotreatment reversed the downregulation of AMPK and eNOS phosphorylation induced by H 2 O 2 in HAEC cells. The pretreatment with the inhibitors of AMPK (compound C) and eNOS (L-NAME) wiped off RA’s beneficial effects. All these results demonstrated that RA attenuated the endothelial dysfunction induced by oxidative stress by activating the AMPK/eNOS pathway.

Figure 1S. The influence of Akt level in the protection of RA against H2O2-induced endothelial dysfunction in aorta rings. Figure 2S. The influence of Akt level in the protection of RA against H2O2-induced endothelial dysfunction in HAEC.