The Atrial Natriuretic Factor Purification, Isolation of the Peptide and of Prepro ANF, and Physiological Studies

Abstract

The existence of cells containing granules in cardiac atria was first described in 1956 in guinea pigs by Kisch [47]. In 1964, Jamieson and Palade [42] showed that these granules were present in the atria of all mammalian species including man and were specifically different from lysosomes and other intracellular organelles. From that period up to 1981, three major groups devoted much energy to the study of these cells called cardiocytes. One was that of Cantin et al. from the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, who demonstrated in 1974 that these granules were of a protein nature [40, 41] and did not contain catecholamines [8] nor renin [10, 76]. A second was that of Hatt in Paris, who made a fundamental contribution by demonstrating that the granularity of these cells in rats varied markedly depending on the water and sodium intake [51]. The third was that of Bencosme at Queen’s University in Canada [4] and of his collaborator de Bold, who confirmed the findings of Cantin et al. and Marie et al. [23–25] and in 1981, together with Borenstein, Veress, and Sonnenberg, made the key discovery of a rapid, short, and massive diuresis and natriuresis in rats following the intravenous administration of crude homogenates of rat’s atria [26]. The last three years have been a period of major advances which represent a key breakthrough in our understanding of the regulation of water and sodium and of hypertensive diseases.