With this background in mind, we hypothesized that acute myocardial ischemia and reperfusion injury increase MMP-9 and TGFβ-1 activity in the kidney and further that reducing myocardial injury with LV unloading the left ventricle before reperfusion reduces MMP activity and profibrotic signaling in the kidney during AMI. The gene discussed is MMP9; the disease is myocardial ischemia.