Isoliquiritigenin alleviates liver fibrosis through caveolin-1-mediated hepatic stellate cells ferroptosis in zebrafish and mice.

Background: Liver fibrosis is a major disease that threatens people's health around the world. However, there is a lack of effective treatment to completely reverse liver fibrosis. Liver transplantation is currently the only curative option for patients with advanced cirrhosis. Ferroptosis is a newly discovered type of cell death and plays an important role in the process of liver fibrosis, but the specific mechanism needs to be clarified.

Hypothesis/purpose: To explore the regulatory mechanism of isoliquiritigenin (ISL) in the process of liver fibrosis and the relationship between Cav-1 and ferroptosis.

Methods: In this research, zebrafish, HSC-T6 cells, and mice were used as the research object. Different ROS probes to visually detect the content and distribution of ROS in live zebrafish and cells. Lentivirus and siRNA-mediated transfection techniques were used for the construction of Cav-1 overexpression and knockdown cell lines to verify the important role of Cav-1 in vitro.

Results: Generally, we first elucidated that ISL relieved liver fibrosis by inducing hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) ferroptosis through repressing GPX4 expression and increasing the expression of TFR and DMT1, thus producing a large number of ROS, we also found that Cav-1 exerted its anti-hepatic fibrosis effect by promoting HSCs ferroptosis.

Conclusion: Our results have shown that Cav-1-mediated HSCs ferroptosis is necessary for ISL to play an anti-fibrotic effect in vitro and in vivo.