Percutaneous coronary intervention is the first line of therapy to treat coronary artery diseases (CAD) and primarily involves stenting the diseased arteries. However, in-stent restenosis (ISR) and stent thrombosis are common complications associated with stent deployment1. Blood interaction at the blood-stent interface is characterized by an almost immediate adsorption of plasma proteins on the metal surface, followed by platelet and inflammatory cell attachment and activation2. The release of the inflammatory cytokines and chemokines from activated inflammatory cells leads to the phenotypic modification of the vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) in the tunica media and triggers their centripetal migration to the intimal compartment. Proliferation of activated VSMC in the intima results in intimal layer thickening, lumen narrowing and in-stent restenosis3. Drug eluting stents (DES) were developed to prevent VSMC proliferation; however, these drugs have an off-target cytotoxic effect on the endothelial cells4,5. Therefore, late stent thrombosis is a common complication associated with DES6,7. Stents made of biodegradable polymers, such as poly-L-lactide have shown much promise in the animal experiments and initial clinical trials, but were eventually recalled when the “real-life” clinical use demonstrated their inferiority to the 3rd generation DES8. Therefore, there is a need to improve the biocompatibility of bare metal stents for better patient outcomes.
CD47 is a ubiquitously expressed transmembrane protein that inhibits the innate immune response when bound to its cognate receptor Signal Regulatory Protein alpha (SIRPα)9. The SIRPα receptor has an immune cell tyrosine inhibitory motif (ITIM) domain and the signaling events upon SIRPα - CD47 interaction ultimately result in the downregulation of inflammatory cell activation10,11,12,13. Research in our lab has shown that recombinant CD47 or its peptide derivative, corresponding to the 22 amino acid Ig domain of the extracellular region of CD47 (pepCD47), can reduce the host immune response to a range of clinically relevant biomaterials14,15,16. Recently, we have demonstrated that pepCD47 can be immobilized to stainless steel stent surfaces and significantly reduce the pathophysiological response associated with restenosis. Of note, the pepCD47 modified surfaces are amenable to relevant usage conditions such as long term storage and ethylene oxide sterilization17. To that end, pepCD47 may be a useful therapeutic target to address the clinical limitations of endovascular stents.
The strategy for the covalent attachment of pepCD47 to a metal surface involves a series of novel chemical modifications of the metal surface. The metal surfaces are first coated with polyallylamine bisphosphonate with latent thiol groups (PABT) followed by the deprotection of the thiols and attachment of polyethyleneimine (PEI) with installed pyridyldithio groups (PDT). PDT groups of PEI unconsumed in the reaction with deprotected PABT thiols are then reacted with pepCD47 incorporating thiols in the terminal cysteine residues, resulting in binding pepCD47 to the metal surface via a disulfide bond14,17,18. We used a fluorophore conjugated pepCD47 (TAMRA-pepCD47) to determine the input concentration of peptide that results in the maximum surface immobilization of the peptide. Finally, we evaluated the acute and chronic anti-inflammatory capacity of the pepCD47 coated metal surfaces, ex vivo, using the Chandler loop apparatus, and monocyte attachment/macrophage expansion assay, respectively.
This paper provides a systematic protocol for the attachment of thiolated peptides to the metal surface; determining the maximum immobilization density of the peptide; and assessing the anti-inflammatory properties of pepCD47 coated metal surfaces exposed to whole blood and isolated monocytes.