Quantitative Proteomics Reveal the Role of Matrine in Lipid Metabolism

Hyperlipidemia (HLP) can lead to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and other urgent diseases, such as myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke. So, early therapy for HLP is necessary. As existing drugs to treat HLP could not achieve the ideal effect for some patients, we have to find new drugs for HLP treatment. More and more evidence has shown that matrine has the function in treating HLP, but the mechanism of matrine in treating HLP is still unknown. In this study, we investigated the mechanism of matrine in treating HLP by performing quantitative proteomics. We discovered that matrine can upregulate the gene transcription and expression of LDLR and improve the uptake of LDL in HepG2 cells. Results also showed that the upregulated LDLR mediated by matrine plays an important role in reversing disordered lipid metabolism in vivo. As the disordered lipid metabolism is related to the development of lung cancer and matrine has been reported to have the function of treating lung cancer, we explored whether the regulation of lipid metabolism mediated by metrine has effect on the development of lung cancer. Through performing quantitative proteomics in A549, we noticed that the dynamic proteins regulated by matrine mainly enriched in the pathways related to lipid metabolism. And the expression of LDLR was also promoted by matrine in A549 cells. As studies have found that upregulated and prolonged uptake of LDL is detrimental to breast cancer cells, we speculated matrine exerts its anti-lung cancer function through promoting the expression of LDLR.