Blood, Vol. 92 No. 10 (November 15), 1998:
pp. 3710-3720
Involvement of Na+/Ca2+ Exchanger in
Inside-Out Signaling Through the Platelet Integrin
IIb
3
Masamichi Shiraga,
Yoshiaki Tomiyama,
Shigenori Honda,
Hidenori Suzuki,
Satoru Kosugi,
Seiji Tadokoro,
Yuzuru Kanakura,
Kenjiro Tanoue,
Yoshiyuki Kurata, and
Yuji Matsuzawa
From the Second Department of Internal Medicine, Osaka University
Medical School and Department of Blood Transfusion, Osaka University
Hospital, Osaka, Japan; and the Department of Cardiovascular Research,
The Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Tokyo, Japan.
The platelet integrin
IIb
3 has become
a new target for the treatment of pathological thrombosis. It becomes
apparent that the affinity of
IIb
3 for
its ligands is dynamically regulated by inside-out signaling. However,
the components that couple diverse intracellular signals to the
cytoplasmic domains of
IIb
3 remain obscure. Employing a chymotrypsin-induced
IIb
3 activation model, we previously
proposed the hypothesis that Na+/Ca2 +
exchanger (NCX) may be involved in inside-out signaling (Shiraga et al:
Blood 88:2594, 1996). In the present study, employing two unrelated Na+/Ca2+ exchange inhibitors,
3
,4
-dichlorobenzamil (DCB) and bepridil, we investigated
the role of NCX in platelet activation induced by various agonists in
detail. Both inhibitors abolished platelet aggregation induced by all
agonists examined via the inhibition of
IIb
3 activation. Moreover, these
inhibitors abolished
IIb
3 activation
induced by phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate or A23187. On the other
hand, neither of these inhibitors showed apparent inhibitory effects on
protein phosphorylation of pleckstrin or myosin light chain, or an
increase in intracellular calcium ion concentrations evoked by 0.1 U/mL
thrombin. These effects of the NCX inhibitors are in striking contrast
to those of protein kinase C inhibitor, Ro31-8220. Biochemical and
ultrastructural analyses showed that NCX inhibitors, particularly DCB,
made platelets "thrombasthenic". These findings suggest that the
NCX is involved in the common steps of inside-out signaling through
integrin
IIb
3.