This study was undertaken to test two therapies for acute kidney injury (AKI) prevention, IGF-1, which is renal protective, and BTP-2, which is a calcium entry (SOCE) inhibitor. We utilized lipopolysaccharide (LPS) IP, as a systemic model of AKI and studied in five groups of animals. Three experiments showed that at 7 days: (1) LPS significantly reduced serum IGF-1 and intramuscular IGF-I in vivo gene therapy rescued this deficiency. (2) Next, at the 7-day time point, our combination therapy，compared to the untreated group,caused a significant increase in survival, which was noteworthy because all of the untreated animals died in 72 hrs. (3) The four pathways associated with inflammation, including (A) increase in cytosolic calcium, (B) elaboration of proinflammatory cytokines, (C) impairment of vascular integrity, and (D) cell injury, were adversely affected in renal tissue by LPS, using a sublethal dose of LPS. The expression of several genes was measured in each of the above pathways. The combined therapy of IGF-1 and BTP-2 caused a favorable gene expression response in all four pathways. Our current study was an AKI study, but these pathways are also involved in other types of severe inflammation, including sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and probably severe coronavirus infection.
Keywords: LPS; calcium signaling; inflammation; kidney injury; vascular integrity.