Regulation of bovine intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) and vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) on cultured aortic endothelial cells

Endothelial cell adhesion molecules (AM) intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) and vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) are important mediators of cell migration from blood into tissue. The kinetics of ICAM-1 mRNA and VCAM-1 protein expression in bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAEC) were determined using quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (Q-RT-PCR) and flow cytometric analysis, respectively. Stimulation of BAEC with recombinant bovine tumor necrosis factor alpha (rbTNF-α) resulted in protein expression of VCAM-1 on less than 5% of all cultured BAECs at 1 h post-stimulation, followed by a significant increase at 3 h that was maintained until 48 h when the proportion of VCAM-1 positive (+) cells decreased significantly, but not to baseline proportions. The expression kinetics for VCAM-1 were similar on cells stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) except at 24 h, when there was a significantly higher proportion of BAEC expressing VCAM-1 than at any other time. The expression of ICAM-1 mRNA differed significantly between stimuli. Expression of ICAM-1 mRNA peaked at 12–18 h and then diminished but remained at amounts above baseline up to 72 h after stimulation. Stimulation with LPS induced a significant increase in ICAM-1 mRNA expression between 1 and 12 h after which the amounts rapidly decreased to baseline. In summary, different stimuli produced similar expression kinetics of VCAM-1 surface protein but different kinetics of ICAM-1 mRNA expression.