Pipoxolan as a Potent Inhibitor of Neointimal Hyperplasia After Balloon Injury in Rat Carotid Artery

Percutaneous coronary angioplasty is usually indicated for atherosclerosis‐induced coronary obstruction. Unfortunately, there are approximately 30% to 50% of patients receiving PTCA suffered from restenosis within 6 months. Thus, the present study is to examine if pipoxolan could inhibit the neointima proliferation due to balloon injury‐induced restenosis. We used the smooth muscle cell line (A10) with various dosage of pipoxolan (50‐55–60 μM ) for MTT test, DNA laddering, Western blot. In the in vitro study, total protein extracted from A10 cells treated with50‐55–60 μM of pipoxolan was subjected to western blot analysis. Results showed that PCNA‐ Raf‐ p‐ERK2 and ERK2 are in a dose‐dependent manner as compared to the positive controls. In addition, MTT test demonstrated that pipoxolan significantly reduced proliferation of A10 cells as compared to the controls ( p <0.01).Our study may shed the light into the evaluation of pipoxolan to be an effective pharmacological reagent in preventing abnormal vascular smooth muscle cells proliferation.