Heart failure (HF) induced by
ischemia myocardial infarction (MI) is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality all around the world.
Atorvastatin, a hydroxymethylglutaryl
coenzyme A reductase inhibitor, has been demonstrated to benefit patients with ischemic or non-ischemic-induced HF, but the mechanism is still poorly understood. Increasing evidence indicates that lncRNAs play important role in variety of human disease. However, the role and underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unclear. In our work, we applied 0.5% O2 to generate a
hypoxia cardiac progenitor cell (
CPC) model. Then, CCK8 and EdU assays were employed to investigate the role of
atorvastatin in
hypoxia CPC cell model. We found that
hypoxia inhibits
CPC viability and proliferation through modulating MEG3 expression, while
atorvastatin application can protect CPCs from
hypoxia-induced injury through inhibiting MEG3 expression. Then, we demonstrated that repression of MEG3 inhibited the
hypoxia-induced injury of CPCs and overexpression of MEG3 inhibited the protective effect of
atorvastatin in the
hypoxia-induced injury of CPCs. Furthermore, our study illustrated that
atorvastatin played its role in
CPC viability and proliferation by modulating the expression of
HMGB1 through the MEG3/miR-22 pathway. Our study, for the first time, uncovered the molecular mechanism of
atorvastatin's protective role in cardiomyocytes under
hypoxia condition, which may provide an exploitable target in developing effective
therapy drugs for MI patients.