Panax Notoginseng Saponins Regulate Transforming Growth Factor- β 1 through MAPK and Snail/TWIST1 Signaling Pathway to Inhibit Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition of Pulmonary Fibrosis in A549 Cells

VietDung Nguyen; Fei Pan; GuangZhong Zhang; Qing Zhang; Yang Lu

doi:10.1155/2022/3744618

Panax Notoginseng Saponins Regulate Transforming Growth Factor- β 1 through MAPK and Snail/TWIST1 Signaling Pathway to Inhibit Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition of Pulmonary Fibrosis in A549 Cells

Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2022 Jul 12:2022:3744618. doi: 10.1155/2022/3744618. eCollection 2022.

Authors

VietDung Nguyen¹, Fei Pan^{1

2}, GuangZhong Zhang^{1

2}, Qing Zhang¹, Yang Lu¹

Affiliations

¹ Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100029, China.
² Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100010, China.

Abstract

Panaxnotoginseng saponins (PNS) is one of the active components of traditional Chinese medicine Panax notoginseng which has the function of reducing oxygen consumption, expansion of the cerebrovascular system, and is antithrombotic. PNS also plays a role in the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis. In this study, we found that PNS suppresses fibroblast-like changes in A549 cells through epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). PNS promoted E-cadherin (E-cad) in epithelial cells and decreased Fibronectin (FN) and Vimentin (Vim) expression in myofibroblasts in a dose-dependent manner. Further mechanism studies have shown that PNS inhibits the EMT process by regulating p38, JNK, and Erk signaling factors in the MAPK signaling pathway and then blocking Snail and TWIST1 transcription factors from entering the nucleus. This indicates that PNS can regulate epithelial-mesenchymal transition through MAPK and the Snail/TWIST1 signaling pathway, thereby exerting its antipulmonary fibrosis effect.