Anti-atherosclerosis mechanisms associated with regulation of non-coding RNAs by active monomers of traditional Chinese medicine

Guoqing Liu; Liqiang Tan; Xiaona Zhao; Minghui Wang; Zejin Zhang; Jing Zhang; Honggang Gao; Meifang Liu; Wei Qin

doi:10.3389/fphar.2023.1283494

Anti-atherosclerosis mechanisms associated with regulation of non-coding RNAs by active monomers of traditional Chinese medicine

Front Pharmacol. 2023 Nov 6:14:1283494. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2023.1283494. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Guoqing Liu^{1

2}, Liqiang Tan³, Xiaona Zhao^{2

4}, Minghui Wang^{1

2}, Zejin Zhang^{2

5}, Jing Zhang², Honggang Gao², Meifang Liu², Wei Qin²

Affiliations

¹ School of Pharmacy, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan, Shandong, China.
² School of Pharmacy, Jining Medical University, Rizhao, Shandong, China.
³ Department of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
⁴ School of Pharmacy, Weifang Medical University, Weifang, Shandong, China.
⁵ School of Pharmacy, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, Shandong, China.

Abstract

Atherosclerosis is the leading cause of numerous cardiovascular diseases with a high mortality rate. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), RNA molecules that do not encode proteins in human genome transcripts, are known to play crucial roles in various physiological and pathological processes. Recently, researches on the regulation of atherosclerosis by ncRNAs, mainly including microRNAs, long non-coding RNAs, and circular RNAs, have gradually become a hot topic. Traditional Chinese medicine has been proved to be effective in treating cardiovascular diseases in China for a long time, and its active monomers have been found to target a variety of atherosclerosis-related ncRNAs. These active monomers of traditional Chinese medicine hold great potential as drugs for the treatment of atherosclerosis. Here, we summarized current advancement of the molecular pathways by which ncRNAs regulate atherosclerosis and mainly highlighted the mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicine monomers in regulating atherosclerosis through targeting ncRNAs.

Keywords: active monomer; atherosclerosis; cardiovascular diseases; non-coding RNAs; traditional Chinese medicine.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (82073846 and 81800399), Joint Fund of Shandong Natural Science Foundation (ZR2021LZY007), Shandong Province Universities’s Plan for Youth Innovation Teams (2022KJ103). Key R&D Program of Jining (2022YXNS153), and Rizhao Outstanding Youth Science Fund (RZ2021ZR22).