Tacrolimus increases the expression level of the chemokine receptor CXCR2 to promote renal fibrosis progression.

Tacrolimus increases the expression level of the chemokine receptor CXCR2 to promote renal fibrosis progression. Int J Mol Med. 2019 Oct 10;: Authors: Wang D, Chen X, Fu M, Xu H, Li Z Abstract Tacrolimus is one of the most used and effective immunosuppressive agents currently available in the clinic; however, its use is limited by nephrotoxicity, which is the main secondary effect of this drug. The mechanisms underlying tacrolimus‑induced nephrotoxicity remain unknown. The present study aimed to investigate the mechanism underlying tacrolimus‑induced nephrotoxicity and to identify novel potential targets. Masson staining, Sirius red staining and periodic acid‑silver methenamine staining were used to observe kidney pathological changes. Immunohistochemical and immunofluorescent analyses were performed to examine the expression levels of vimentin, E‑cadherin and α‑smooth muscle actin (α‑SMA). Transcriptomics and bioinformatics analyses were performed to investigate the nephrotoxicity mechanism induced by tacrolimus using RNA‑sequencing, differentially expressed genes identification and annotation, and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analysis. The present results demonstrated that compared with the normal control group, the tacrolimus nephrotoxicity group exhibited severe renal fibrosis (P<0.05), upregulated vimentin (P<0.01), downregulated E‑cadherin (P<0.05) and upregulated α‑SM...
Source: International Journal of Molecular Medicine - Category: Molecular Biology Authors: Tags: Int J Mol Med Source Type: research