Effect of TUDCA on the artery which suffered from the atherosclerosis in ApoE-/- mice

Cholesterol efflux capacity dysfunction in macrophages is thought to be important in atherosclerosis. However, the molecular mechanism underlying this dysfunction remains unclear. Our previous analysis found that the increase of endoplasmic reticulum stress in macrophages during atherosclerotic plaque formation. Here we extended our analysis to ApoE-/- mice fed a high fat diet, some of which were treated with tauroursodeoxycholic acid (TUDCA) and collected the arteries of mice among these three groups (NFD, HFD and HFD+TUDCA) to perform the Bulk-RNA sequencing. There was significantly high expression of matrix metalloproteinase family (MMP9, MMP25, MMP8, MMP12, MMP13 and MMP3), CD68, inflammasome (IL1b, IL18bp, ifi44, ifi204 and Nlrp3), ER stress (Hspa5) and cholesterol transporters (ABCA1 and ABCG1) in the HFD group compared with the NFD group, however, TUDCA rescued the high expression of the above DEGs to different degrees. As shown by the expression levels of ifi204, Nlrp3, Il1b, and Il18, inflammasome activation was evident in the arteries of the HFD group compared to the NFD group. The ER stress inhibitor TUDCA not only decreased expression of the ER stress-related gene Hspa5 but also down-regulated inflammasome activation (as seen with the expression levels of ifi204, ifi44, NLRP3 and IL1b) in the artery of TUDCA treated mice compared with mice without drugs.