Endocrine Abstracts

Mitochondria play an important role in generating energy, and they are essential to cell survival. Mitochondria have varieties of functions, such as regulating intracellular calcium concentration and signal transduction, controlling hormone synthesis, inflammatory responses, and free radicals. In particular this research is interested in the mitochondria in kidney tubular cell. Since mitochondria in tubular cells play an important role in supplying energy, removal of waste and reabsorption of nutrients in the blood, control of blood pressure, and maintenance of homeostasis. Mitochondrial damage may occur by drugs or related chemicals for the treatment of various diseases. Therefore, it may be related to mitochondrial dysfunction. Following experiment was conducted to investigate the relation between kidney and mitochondrial dysfunction. First, five drugs known to be toxic chemicals to mitochondria were selected. After treatment with mouse kidney stem cells, the specific concentration of cell viability (IC50) was selected for each chemicals. The results of valproic acid, a representative mitochondria toxicant, treated on the cell, confirmed that the expression of SOD2 increased according to the increasing concentration of valproic acid. Result of performing an analysis using MitoSOX red staining to confirm the relationship between mitochondrial toxicity and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS), it was found that the level of mtROS according to the concentration of a valproic acid was relatively increased.