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Fructus lycii oligosaccharide alleviates acute liver injury via PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway

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Abstract

Regulating the immune-environment is essential for treating acute liver injury (ALI). However, the deficiency of an effective immune balancer restricted progress. Herein, we reported an oligosaccharide from Fructus lycii oligosaccharide (FLO). To investigate the effects of FLO, we adopted primary macrophages and LO2 for experiments in vitro. In vivo, we assessed the influence of FLO in ALI with histochemical staining and enzyme indicators detection. Following that, we clarified the underlying mechanisms using western blotting and immunofluorescence. Our results indicated that FLO (100 μg/mL) showed apparent inflammatory reversal effects by shifting the phenotype of macrophages from M1 to M2 without causing any cytotoxicity. Furthermore, CCl4-induced mice were significantly improved by FLO intragastric administration. Meanwhile, PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway was confirmed for the up-regulation of IL-10 via M2 polarization of macrophages. Collectively, our findings highlight the beneficial effects of FLO on ALI therapy via M1 to M2 macrophage conversion.

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Data availability

Raw datasets used during the current study are stored and available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

ALI:

Acute liver injury

ALT:

Alanine transaminase

AST:

Aspartate transaminase

BSA:

Bovine serum albumin

DDW:

Double distill water

FBS:

Fetal bovine serum

FLO:

Fructus lycii oligosaccharide

FLP:

Fructus lycii polysaccharide

FLS:

Fructus lycii saccharide

FT-IR:

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

H&E,:

Hematoxylin and eosin

HPLC:

High-performance liquid chromatography

HRP:

Horseradish peroxidase

iNOS:

Inducible nitric oxide synthase

LO2 :

Human normal liver cells

LPS:

Lipopolysaccharide

NMR-C:

Nuclear magnetic resonance-C

NMR-H:

Nuclear magnetic resonance-H

PBS:

Phosphate buffer solution

PFA:

Paraformaldehyde

PVDF:

Polyvinylidene difluoride

SPF:

Specific pathogen free

UPLC-DAD-MS/MS:

High-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode-array detection and electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Wentao Shi for his technical assistance and Ziyue Liu for collecting samples. We appreciated for the guidance provided from Ethics Committee in Jiangsu university in the animal experiments.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20220529). Experiments were conducted at School of Medicine in Jiangsu University.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Zhe Wang and Xingxing Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, People’s Republic of China

    Zhe Wang, Xingxing Zhang & Zhijian Zhang

  2. Affiliated Hospital of Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212001, China

    De ming Lv & Sucheng Cao

  3. Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 210003, China

    Guang Yang

  4. Laboratory of Drug Delivery and Tissue Regeneration, Jiangsu Provincial Research Center for Medicinal Function Development of New Food Resources, School of Pharmacy, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, People’s Republic of China

    Qingtong Yu

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  1. Zhe Wang
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  3. De ming Lv
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  4. Sucheng Cao
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  5. Guang Yang
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Contributions

Zhe Wang: investigation, supervision, formal analysis, methodology, writing — original draft. Xingxing Zhang: formal analysis, methodology, writing — original draft. Deming Lv: resources, writing — review and editing. Sucheng Cao: methodology, validation. Guang Yang: writing — review and editing, formal analysis. Zhijian Zhang: conceptualization, project administration, funding acquisition, supervision. Qingtong Yu: conceptualization, methodology, writing — review and editing, investigation, funding acquisition.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zhijian Zhang or Qingtong Yu.

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Wang, Z., Zhang, X., Lv, D.m. et al. Fructus lycii oligosaccharide alleviates acute liver injury via PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway. Immunol Res 72, 271–283 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12026-023-09431-y

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