[Role of TGF-ß/Smad signaling pathway in diabetic kidney disease and research progress of traditional Chinese medicine intervention].

Diabetic kidney disease is an important microvascular complication of diabetes and the leading cause of end-stage renal disease. Its pathological characteristics mainly include epithelial mesenchymal transition(EMT) in glomerulus, podocyte apoptosis and autophagy, and damage of glomerular filtration barrier. Transforming growth factor-ß(TGF-ß)/Smad signaling pathway is specifically regulated by a variety of mechanisms, and is a classic pathway involved in physiological activities such as apoptosis, proliferation and differentiation. At present, many studies have found that TGF-ß/Smad signaling pathway plays a key role in the pathogenesis of diabetic kidney disease. Traditional Chinese medicine has significant advantages in the treatment of diabetic kidney disease for its multi-component, multi-target and multi-pathway characteristics, and some traditional Chinese medicine extracts, traditional Chinese medicines and traditional Chinese medicine compound prescription improve the renal injury of diabetic kidney disease by regulating TGF-ß/Smad signaling pathway. This study clarified the mechanism of TGF-ß/Smad signaling pathway in diabetic kidney disease by expounding the relationship between the key targets of the pathway and diabetic kidney disease, and summarized the research progress of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of diabetic kidney disease by interfering with TGF-ß/Smad signaling pathway in recent years, to provide reference for drug research and clinical treatment of diabetic kidney disease in the future.

Mechanisms for Improving Hepatic Glucolipid Metabolism by Cinnamic Acid and Cinnamic Aldehyde: An Insight Provided by Multi-Omics.

Cinnamic acid (AC) and cinnamic aldehyde (AL) are two chemicals enriched in cinnamon and have been previously proved to improve glucolipid metabolism, thus ameliorating metabolic disorders. In this study, we employed transcriptomes and proteomes on AC and AL treated db/db mice in order to explore the underlying mechanisms for their effects. Db/db mice were divided into three groups: the control group, AC group and AL group. Gender- and age-matched wt/wt mice were used as a normal group. After 4 weeks of treatments, mice were sacrificed, and liver tissues were used for further analyses. Functional enrichment of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were performed using Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) databases. DEPs were further verified by parallel reaction monitoring (PRM). The results suggested that AC and AL share similar mechanisms, and they may improve glucolipid metabolism by improving mitochondrial functions, decreasing serotonin contents and upregulating autophagy mediated lipid clearance. This study provides an insight into the molecular mechanisms of AC and AL on hepatic transcriptomes and proteomes in disrupted metabolic situations and lays a foundation for future experiments.