A significant portion of pancreatic islet grafts can be destroyed by apoptosis, failing to engraft in the early period after transplantation. Recently, we observed that overexpression of suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 (SOCS1) in islet grafts achieved an antiapoptotic effect, prolonging graft survival in a rat transplant model. Caspase 3 is the central executioner caspase that is activated by upstream cascades in a caspase-dependent apoptosis pathway. Apoptosis inducing factor (AIF) is a key protein that can be released from mitochondria, translocating to the nucleus in the caspase-independent apoptosis pathway. In this study, we investigated whether these two pathways were involved in cytoprotection afforded by SOCS1 on islet grafts. We used a chimeric adenovirus vector (Ad5F35-SOCS1) to enhance SOCS1 expression in isolated Sprague-Dawley rat islets, which were transplanted into recipients experiencing streptozotocin-induced diabetes. We analyzed the expressions of active (cleaved) caspase 3 and AIF on islets. The Ad5F35-SOCS1-infected islets with higher SOCS1 expression showed decreased levels of active caspase 3 and intranuclear AIF after treatment with tumor necrosis factor-α and cycloheximide in vitro. The diabetic recipients transplanted with Ad5F35-SOCS1-infected islets showed longer periods of normoglycemia versus recipients transplanted with mock-infected islets (P < .05) due to prolonged graft survival. A histological analysis indicated that the Ad5F35-SOCS1-infected islet grafts displayed decreased caspase 3 activation and AIF translocation (to nucleus) in the early posttransplant period. These results demonstrated that the expression of SOCS1 in islet grafts protected them from apoptosis through caspase 3 dependent and AIF caspase-independent-pathways.
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