Reduction of experimentally produced acute myocardial infarction size by a new synthetic inhibitor, NCO-700, against calcium-activated neutral protease.

Calcium-activated neutral protease (CANP) might be involved in the irreversible degradation of myocardial proteins in the ischemic region, leading to the loss of contractility. The new compound, NCO-700, and its analogues were synthetized against CANP. Among these analogues, NCO-700 was the most potent to reduce the size of acute myocardial infarction, which was produced by coronary artery ligation in rabbits, in vivo, although it showed less powerful action to inhibit CANP activity in vitro. The new reagent, NCO-700 might be promising to reduce acute myocardial infarction size and beneficial for the clinical studies, because it had no action to reduce cardiac muscle contractility, compared with beta antagonist or calcium-channel blockades.