Bioassay of prostacyclin and endothelium-derived relaxing factor (EDRF) from porcine aortic endothelial cells

摘要

This paper represented the interface between two long and very productive periods of research. The first of these started in 1976 with our discovery of thromboxane synthase (Needleman et al., 1976) and prostacyclin (Moncada et al 1976a) and the second began with this paper and led to the discovery the following year of the identity of EDRF as nitric oxide (NO) (Palmer et al., 1987) and the subsequent elucidation of its many biological roles. Endothelium-dependent relaxation and EDRF had been identified by Furchgott and Zawadzki (1980) using fresh vascular tissues and many people had confirmed their findings using a variety of tissues (see Furchgott, 1984; Moncada et al., 1987); Vanhoutte, 1989). A number of experiments were carried out attempting to transfer biologically active EDRF from one piece of vascular tissue to another. Some of these were sufficiently successful for a half-life for EDRF to be calculated (Griffith et al., 1984; Cocks et al., 1985; Forstermann et al., 1985). Many other experiments were carried out attempting to identify the chemical structure of EDRF and to inhibit its activity (Singler et al., 1984; Pinto et al., 1985;MacDonalde al., 1986).