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(Circulation Research. 2008;103:e119.)
© 2008 American Heart Association, Inc.

Letters to the Editor

Response to Abcouwer and Roybal

Levon M. Khachigian

Centre for Vascular Research, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, E-mail l.khachigian@unsw.edu.au

Alexander Bobik, Peter Kanellakis

Baker Heart Research Institute IDI, Melbourne, Australia

Kristine Malabanan

Centre for Vascular Research, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

We are writing in response to a letter from Drs Abcouwer and Roybal regarding our recent article¹ in Circulation Research and the accompanying commentary.²

Drs Abcouwer and Roybal claim that we did not acknowledge prior work linking ATF-4 to VEGF-A expression. They pointed to papers from their own group published in 2004³ and 2005,⁴ as well as other studies by Chakraborty et al (published January 2008)⁵ and Oskolkova et al (May 2008).⁶ However, our article did, in fact, cite both Roybal articles (Refs 25 and 40; see pages 386 to 387 of Malabanan et al) and the Chakraborty article (Ref 39; see page 387 of Malabanan et al). Indeed, our article clearly states (see page 381, column 1, paragraph 2) that "previous studies have demonstrated the existence of a single functional ATF-4 binding site in the VEGF-A gene." And after this statement, we cite Roybal et al.⁴ Our article even cites a third report from Dr Abcouwer and colleagues (Luo et al [Ref 26]; page 386 of Malabanan et al). Thus, we cited no fewer than 3 articles by Abcouwer and colleagues on ATF-4. We were not aware of the report by Oskolkova et al until after the publication of our article; Oskolkova et al was published online ahead of print only a few weeks before our report was published.

The above notwithstanding, in our report,¹ we demonstrate the existence of an fibroblast growth factor-2/ATF-4/VEGF-A axis in vascular smooth muscle cells in the context of wound repair after balloon angioplasty, . . . [Full Text of this Article]