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Role of ferroptosis in food-borne mycotoxin-induced toxicities

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Abstract

Contamination by toxic substances is a major global food safety issue, which poses a serious threat to human health. Mycotoxins are major class of food contaminants, mainly including aflatoxins (AFs), zearalenone (ZON), deoxynivalenol (DON), ochratoxin A (OTA), fumonisins (FBs) and patulin (PAT). Ferroptosis is a newly identified iron-dependent form of programmed or regulated cell death, which has been found to be involved in diverse pathological conditions. Recently, a growing body of evidence has shown that ferroptosis is implicated in the toxicities induced by certain types of food-borne mycotoxins, which provides novel mechanistic insights into mycotoxin-induced toxicities and paves the way for developing ferroptosis-based strategy to combat against toxicities of mycotoxins. In this review article, we summarize the key findings on the involvement of ferroptosis in mycotoxin-induced toxicities and propose issues that need to be addressed in future studies for better utilization of ferroptosis-based approach to manage the toxic effects of mycotoxin contamination.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFF1100205).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, Beijing Key Laboratory for Food Non-thermal Processing, China Agricultural University, No. 17 Qinghua East Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China

    Lixing Cao, Chong Zhao, Shutao Yin & Hongbo Hu

  2. College of Veterinary Medicine, China Agricultural University, No. 2 Yunamingyuan West Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100193, China

    Lihong Fan

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  1. Lixing Cao
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Contributions

HH, LF and LC wrote the main text of the manuscript; LC prepared the figures and tables; CZ and SY help to revise and edit the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chong Zhao or Hongbo Hu.

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Cao, L., Fan, L., Zhao, C. et al. Role of ferroptosis in food-borne mycotoxin-induced toxicities. Apoptosis 29, 267–276 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10495-023-01907-4

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