Manipulation of the HIF-Vegf pathway rescues methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE)-induced vascular lesions

Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) has been shown to be specifically anti-angiogenic in piscine and mammalian model systems at concentrations that appear non-toxic in other organ systems. The mechanism by which MTBE targets developing vascular structures is unknown. A global transcriptome analysis of zebrafish embryos developmentally exposed to 0.00625–5 mM MTBE suggested that hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-regulated pathways were affected. HIF-driven angiogenesis via vascular endothelial growth factor (vegf) is essential to the developing vasculature of an embryo. Three rescue studies were designed to rescue MTBE-induced vascular lesions: pooled blood in the common cardinal vein (CCV), cranial hemorrhages (CH), and abnormal intersegmental vessels (ISV), and test the hypothesis that MTBE toxicity was HIF–Vegf dependent. First, zebrafish vegf-a over-expression via plasmid injection, resulted in significantly fewer CH and ISV lesions, 46 and 35% respectively, in embryos exposed to 10 mM MTBE. Then HIF degradation was inhibited in two ways. Chemical rescue by N-oxaloylglycine significantly reduced CCV and CH lesions by 30 and 32% in 10 mM exposed embryos, and ISV lesions were reduced 24% in 5 mM exposed zebrafish. Finally, a morpholino designed to knock-down ubiquitin associated von Hippel–Lindau protein, significantly reduced CCV lesions by 35% in 10 mM exposed embryos. In addition, expression of some angiogenesis related genes altered by MTBE exposure were rescued. These studies demonstrated that MTBE vascular toxicity is mediated by a down regulation of HIF–Vegf driven angiogenesis. The selective toxicity of MTBE toward developing vasculature makes it a potentially useful chemical in the designing of new drugs or in elucidating roles for specific angiogenic proteins in future studies of vascular development.