ELABELA And Its Fragment ELA11 Protect Against Renal Ischemia And Reperfusion Injury

Acute kidney injury is a worldwide public health problem,with high morbidity,mortality and treatment costs[1].Renal ischemia and reperfusion injury(I/R injury)is the common cause of acute kidney injury.The ELABELA(ELA),a recently discovered hormone peptide containing 32 amino acids,plays important roles in the endoderm differentiation and the development of cardiovascular system.Apela,the gene encoding ELA,was expressed in most of tissues of fetal mouse,but only highly expressed in the kidney of adult mouse.The protein sequence of ELA indicated that there are two pairs of cleavage sites of the paired alkaline protease,thus other bioactive forms of ELA may exist.Here,we investigated whether ELA32 and ELA11(the shortest bioactive peptide of ELA)have a protective effect on renal I/R injury.The experimental results showed that ELAs could significantly reduce the I/R injury-induced renal tubular lesions,renal interstitial fibrosis,inflammatory response and apoptosis.Also,over-expression of ELA32 and ELA11 in NRK-52E cells were able to significantly inhibit the inflammatory response,DNA damage response and apoptosis which induced by hypoxia and reperfusion(H/R)injury.In the present study,we first proposed that ELAs might be used as drugs to treat acute renal injury.