Project description:Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one of the major global health problems with high incidence, poor prognosis and high medical cost. However, few pharmacological options are available for CKD. Metformin is widely used for treatment of type-2 diabetes, but recent works showed that metformin ameliorates tumor progression, inflammatory disease and tissue fibrosis. Whether metformin ameliorates non-diabetic chronic glomerular disease and CKD is unexplored. Here we showed that metformin or losartan (used as control) has protective effects against CKD by suppressing proteinuria, renal inflammation, fibrosis and glomerular injury in Alport syndrome mouse model, which spontaneously manifests chronic glomerular and kidney disease. Transcriptome analysis showed that metformin and losartan influenced molecular pathways of metabolism and inflammation, respectively. While metformin specifically affected genes that were classified as metabolic regulators, losartan specifically altered genes that were classified as inflammatory regulators. Metformin also induced multiple signaling pathways not affected by losartan. Overall, metformin ameliorates non-diabetic chronic glomerular diseases, and could be considered a therapeutic option for CKD. We used microarrays to investigate the global gene expression underlying the protective effects of metformin on Alport syndrome mice model
Project description:Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) having higher blood eosinophil levels exhibit worse lung function and more severe emphysema, implying the potential role of eosinophils in emphysema development. However, the specific mechanism underlying eosinophil-mediated emphysema development is not fully elucidated. In this study, single-cell RNA sequencing was used to identify eosinophil subgroups in mouse models of asthma and emphysema and analyze their functions. Analysis of the accumulated eosinophils revealed differential transcriptomes between the mouse lungs of elastase-induced emphysema and ovalbumin-induced asthma., Eosinophil depletion alleviated elastase-induced emphysema. Notably, eosinophil-derived cathepsin L (CTSL) degraded the extracellular matrix (ECM), causing emphysema in the pulmonary tissue. Eosinophils were positively correlated with serum CTSL levels, which were increased in patients with emphysema than in those without emphysema. Collectively, these results suggest that CTSL expression in eosinophils plays an important role in ECM degradation and remodeling and is related to emphysema in patients with COPD. Therefore, eosinophil-derived CTSL may serve as a potential therapeutic target for patients with emphysema.
Project description:In order to investigate the changes of hiPSC-CMS transcriptome after alcohol treatment and whether losartan has an effect on the changes of hiPSC-CM transcriptome after alcohol treatment, RNAseq was performed on hiPSC-CMs treated with 100mM alcohol and 100mM alcohol co-treated with1uM losartan.
Project description:In order to obtain a global perspective of the effect of EHP-101 and Losartan on cardiac fibrosis, we performed a mRNA-Seq analysis of the myocardial tissue changes in response to Ang II, Ang II + EHP-101 and Ang II + Losartan.