Isolation and characterization of human and rat cardiac microvascular endothelial cells

Although reciprocal intercellular signaling may occur between endocardial or microvascular endothelium and cardiac myocytes, suitable in vitro models have not been well characterized. In this report, we describe the isolation and primary culture of cardiac microvascular endothelial cells (CMEC) from both adult rat and human ventricular tissue. Differential uptake of fluorescently labeled acetylated low-density lipoprotein (Ac-LDL) indicated that primary isolates of rat CMEC were quite homogeneous, unlike primary isolates of human ventricular tissue, which required cell sorting based on Ac-LDL uptake to create endothelial cell-enriched primary cultures. The endothelial phenotype of both primary isolates and postsort subcultured CMEC and their microvascular origin were determined by characteristic histochemical staining for a number of endothelial cell-specific markers, by the absence of cells with fibroblast or pericyte-specific cell surface antigens, and by rapid tube formation on purified basement membrane preparations. Importantly, 3H-thymidine uptake was increased 2.3-fold in subconfluent rat microvascular endothelial cells 3 days after coculture with adult rat ventricular myocytes because of release of an endothelial cell mitogen(s) into the extracellular matrix, resulting in a 68% increase in cell number compared with CMEC in monoculture. Thus biologically relevant cell-to-cell interactions can be modeled with this in vitro system.