Research progress of circular RNA in regulating vascular endothelial dysfunction / 药学学报

Atherosclerosis refers to vascular pathological changes in which vascular lumen was narrowed or blocked by cholesterol or fat existed in vascular endothelium, which could induce serious cardiovascular events. The pathogenesis of atherosclerosis is complicated extremely. Vascular endothelial dysfunction initiated the plague formation and deterioration, which determined the prognosis of atherosclerosis. Circular RNA (circRNA) is a special endogenous non-coding RNA, which has become a research hotpot in the field of non-coding RNA. This review aims to bring together the recent research on the pathogenesis and pathological process of endothelial dysfunction, and the regulative effect of circRNA on it. Our article will provide new targets and new ideas for the research and development of anti-atherosclerosis drugs.

Inhibitory effects of anthocyanin on oxidative stress injury and epithelial-mesenchymal transition of human lens epithelial cells / 药学学报

Anthocyanin is a water-soluble flavonoid pigment which is widely found in plants. Studies showed that anthocyanin had protective effect on vision. However, whether anthocyanin has therapeutic effect on cataract remain unclear. In this study, we established the age-related and posterior capsule opacification cataract cell models through inducing oxidative damage of human lens epithelial cells (HLECs) by H2O2 and inducing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by transforming growth factor β2 (TGF-β2). The preventative effects of anthocyanin on markers of oxidative damage and EMT were determined by respective assay kits and PCR analysis. Anthocyanin was beneficial to reduce oxidative stress of HLECs, protecting cells from H2O2 induced damage and increasing α-crystallin expression. The potential mechanisms might be that anthocyanin increased the activities of SOD and GSH-Px, which contributes to reduce cellular ROS and MDA level. Besides, anthocyanin inhibited Ca2+ overload, which contributes to protection of cell from apoptosis. Meanwhile, anthocyanin had inhibitory effect on EMT, slowed down cell proliferation, migration caused by TGF-β2 through decreasing mRNA expression levels of EMT markers including COL1A1, COL1A2, COL3, COL4, Fn and α-SMA. The results suggest that anthocyanin could protect HLECs from oxidative damage induced by H2O2 and cell proliferation, migration and EMT induced by TGF-β2, which indicated that anthocyanin may have protective and therapeutic effects on age-related cataract and posterior capsule opacification.