{"doi":"10.3390/cells9092001","title":"PIM1 Promotes Survival of Cardiomyocytes by Upregulating c-Kit Protein Expression","abstract":"Enhancing cardiomyocyte survival is crucial to blunt deterioration of myocardial structure and function following pathological damage. PIM1 (Proviral Insertion site in Murine leukemia virus (PIM) kinase 1) is a cardioprotective serine threonine kinase that promotes cardiomyocyte survival and antagonizes senescence through multiple concurrent molecular signaling cascades. In hematopoietic stem cells, PIM1 interacts with the receptor tyrosine kinase c-Kit upstream of the ERK (Extracellular signal-Regulated Kinase) and Akt signaling pathways involved in cell proliferation and survival. The relationship between PIM1 and c-Kit activity has not been explored in the myocardial context. This study delineates the interaction between PIM1 and c-Kit leading to enhanced protection of cardiomyocytes from stress. Elevated c-Kit expression is induced in isolated cardiomyocytes from mice with cardiac-specific overexpression of PIM1. Co-immunoprecipitation and proximity ligation assay reveal protein-protein interaction between PIM1 and c-Kit. Following treatment with Stem Cell Factor, PIM1-overexpressing cardiomyocytes display elevated ERK activity consistent with c-Kit receptor activation. Functionally, elevated c-Kit expression confers enhanced protection against oxidative stress in vitro. This study identifies the mechanistic relationship between PIM1 and c-Kit in cardiomyocytes, demonstrating another facet of cardioprotection regulated by PIM1 kinase.","journal":"Cells","year":2020,"id":68554,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":22,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9522,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":363501,"name":"Fareheh Firouzi","orcid":"0000-0002-5931-2717","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363502,"name":"Carolina Esquer","orcid":"0000-0003-1390-7130","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363503,"name":"Julian Navarrete","orcid":"0000-0002-0834-2334","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363504,"name":"Bingyan Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-3522-2848","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363505,"name":"Natalie Gude","orcid":"0000-0002-2297-1954","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363506,"name":"Mark A. Sussman","orcid":"0000-0002-0104-4799","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363500,"name":"David Ebeid","orcid":"0000-0002-5888-1985","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":54,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:41:52.279368Z","pmid":"32878131","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}