Intracellular but not extracellular conversion of nitroxyl anion into nitric oxide leads to stimulation of human neutrophil migration.

Considerable controversy exists in the literature with regard to the nature of the agent mediating the biological effects of nitroxyl (NO-) donors. Here it is demonstrated that Angeli's salt (AS), a generator of NO-, enhanced human neutrophil migration. Under aerobic conditions, AS was converted to peroxynitrite to a small extent. However, using methionine, a scavenger of peroxynitrite, it was shown that peroxynitrite was not involved in AS-induced migration. AS equally enhanced human neutrophil migration under aerobic and anaerobic conditions, which strongly suggests that extracellular conversion of NO- to .NO by oxygen was not required. Furthermore, metHb and L-cysteine, which react more readily with NO- than with .NO, inhibited AS-induced migration, whereas the response towards gaseous .NO remained unaffected. AS induced an increase in the intracellular level of cGMP, although the curves for migration and cGMP level appeared to be slightly different in their concentration dependence. An inhibitor of soluble guanylate cyclase and antagonists of cGMP-dependent protein kinase had a more pronounced inhibitory effect on .NO-induced migration than on AS-induced migration. This suggests that the cGMP signalling cascade is partially, but not solely, responsible for AS-induced migration. As it has been demonstrated that soluble guanylate cyclase can only be activated by .NO, and not by NO-, these data indicate that NO- is at least partly converted intracellularly to .NO.