Epo Is Relevant Neither for Microvascular Formation Nor for the New Formation and Maintenance of Mice Skeletal Muscle Fibres in Both Normoxia and Hypoxia.pdf

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology Volume 2010, Article ID 137817, 13 pages doi:10.1155/2010/137817 Research Article Epo Is Relevant Neither for Microvascular Formation Nor for the New Formation and Maintenance of Mice Skeletal Muscle Fibres in Both Normoxia and Hypoxia Luciana Hagström,1 Onnik Agbulut,2 Raja El-Hasnaoui-Saadani,1 DominiqueMarchant,1 Fabrice Favret,1 Jean-Paul Richalet,1 Michèle Beaudry,1 and Thierry Launay1, 3 1 Laboratoire “Réponses Cellulaires et Fonctionnelles à l’hypoxie”, Université Paris 13, EA 2363, 97017 Bobigny, France 2Laboratoire Stress et Pathologies du Cytosquelette, Unité de Biologie Adaptative et Fonctionnelle, Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7 CNRS, 75013 Paris, France 3Université Paris-Descartes, 75015 Paris, France Correspondence should be addressed to Thierry Launay, thy.launay@free.fr Received 30 October 2009; Revised 28 January 2010; Accepted 9 February 2010 Academic Editor: Aikaterini Kontrogianni-Konstantopoulos Copyright © 2010 Luciana Hagström et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Erythropoietin (Epo) and vascular growth factor (VEGF) are known to be involved in the regulation of cellular activity when oxygen transport is reduced as in anaemia or hypoxic conditions. Because it has been suggested that Epo could play a role in skeletal muscle development, regeneration, and angiogenesis, we aimed to assess Epo deficiency in both normoxia and hypoxia by using an Epo-deficient transgenic mouse model (Epo-TAgh). Histoimmunology, ELISA and real time RT-PCR did not show any muscle fiber atrophy or accumulation of active HIF-1α but an improvement of microvessel network and an upregulation of VEGFR2 mRNA in Epo-deficient gastrocnemius compared with Wild-Type one. In hypoxia, both models exhibit an upregulation of VEGF120 and VEGFR2 mRNA but no accumulation