Figure 3

Effect of plasminogen processing on cell proliferation and angiogenesis. (A) Proliferation of microvascular endothelial cells HMEC-1 is inhibited by GST-MMP-19 processed plasminogen. Plates were coated as follows: black diamond, plasminogen; black circle, aprotinin; black square, processed plasminogen; black triangle, processed plasminogen with MMP inhibitor; inverted black triangle, MMP inhibitor; + (plus symbol), GST-MMP-19 wild-type; cross, GST-MMP-19 inactive mutant. Proliferation was measured over 30 h with 2500 HMEC-1 cells per well and using the Alamar Blue assay. Standard deviation was calculated from triplicates. (B) Proliferation in response to processed plasminogen compared to non-processed plasminogen at assay endpoint (30 h); * p = 0.01 (C) In vitro angiogenesis assay. Processed plasminogen inhibits capillary-like structure formation of HMEC-1 cells (D) The length of tubuli-like structures was measured in at least three wells per experiment. The mean ± SD of the tubuli length is given as the percentage of the control. * p = 0.05.