Collection of Heart Tissue Sample During Open Heart Surgery

Transient non-lethal ischemia followed by reperfusion activates a cell survival program resulting in increased tolerance to subsequent ischemic injury. This biological phenomenon is termed ischemic preconditioning and is a powerful cell survival program that is operational in the human heart. This program is triggered by signaling intermediates activated in response to the transient ischemia/hypoxia and reperfusion of preconditioning. Characterization of these signaling intermediates should enable us to identify therapeutic agents to augment tissue tolerance to ischemia.

Interestingly, nitrite, which is an endogenous reservoir for nitric oxide (NO), undergoes bioconversion to NO via hypoxia-dependent signaling. Whether nitrite accumulation and bioconversion are components of the ischemic preconditioning program is unknown. Recently Dr. Gladwin and colleagues in the Vascular Medicine Branch unequivocally demonstrated that exogenous nitrite administration is cytoprotective against ischemia-reperfusion injury in murine liver and heart and in the canine heart. Establishing a mechanistic link between the ischemic preconditioning program and nitrite biology would promote nitrite as an attractive compound for future therapeutic interventions. To evaluate this link, we propose to use cardiac right atrial appendage tissue that is routinely excised to facilitate right atrial cannulation for heart-lung bypass. This excised tissue is then usually discarded as medical waste.

We hypothesize that nitrite administration to atrial tissue in an ex-vivo study will demonstrate increased tolerance to ischemic stress compared to atrial tissue not exposed to nitrite. Furthermore, we propose that this cytoprotective effect of nitrite administration will demonstrate equivalency to cytoprotection in response to ischemic preconditioning. Finally, we would employ this tissue to identify nitrite mediated genomic, proteomic and metabolomic modifications in human myocardium, thereby identifying the biological programs orchestrating the cytoprotective properties of nitrite in the human heart.