Vaspin expression and function is related to metabolic disorders and comorbidities of obesity. In various cellular and animal models of obesity, diabetes and atherosclerosis vaspin has shown beneficial, protective and/or compensatory action. While testing proteases for inhibition by vaspin, we noticed specific cleavage within the vaspin N-terminus and sequence analysis predicted cell-penetrating activity for the released peptides. These findings raised the question whether these proteolytic peptides exhibit biological activity.We synthesized various N-terminal vaspin peptides to investigate cell-penetrating activity and analyse uptake mechanisms. Focusing on adipocytes, we performed microarray analysis and functional assays to elucidate biological activities of the vaspin-derived peptide, which is released by KLK7 cleavage (vaspin residues 21-30; VaspinN). Our study provides first evidence that proteolytic processing of the vaspin N-terminus releases cell-penetrating and bioactive peptides with effects on adipocyte biology. The VaspinN peptide increased preadipocyte proliferation, interfered with clonal expansion during the early stage of adipogenesis and blunted adrenergic cAMP-signalling, downstream lipolysis as well as insulin signalling in mature adipocytes.Protease-mediated release of functional N-terminal peptides presents an additional facet of vaspin action. Future studies will address the mechanisms underlying the biological activities and clarify, if vaspin-derived peptides may have potential as therapeutic agents for the treatment of metabolic diseases.
Keywords: Adipose tissue; internalization; kallikrein; obesity; proteolysis; serpin.