Explore the anti-inflammation mechanism of safflower total flavonoids in the treatment of endometritis based on celluar transcriptomics.

OBJECTIVES

Safflower is a traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of gynecological diseases and its flavonoids have potential anti-inflammatory effects. The purpose is to explore the possible effects of safflower total flavonoids (STF) on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammatory damage of Ishikawa cells.

METHOD: In this study, LPS-induced endometrial carcinoma Ishikawa cells were used to establish an inflammatory injury model. The effective concentration of STF was screened by CCK-8 and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The apoptosis of damaged Ishikawa cells was detected by flow cytometry. The contents of caspase11 and caspase 3 in Ishikawa cells were observed by fluorescence imaging. Western blot and RT-qPCR were used to detect the expression of related proteins and mRNA in damaged Ishikawa cells, and the possible mechanism of safflower flavonoids against LPS-induced endometrial carcinoma Ishikawa cells was analyzed by cell transcriptomics.

KEY FINDINGS: The STF-reduced tumor necrosis factor α, interleukin-1β, and interleukin-6 expression level; the expression level of the proteins ASK1, Caspase3, and Caspase11 was also significantly decreased, and the proteins ERα, p-PI3K, and p-AKT were significantly increased. The transcriptome results showed that the PI3K-Akt signal pathway may be the main signal pathway for the STF.

CONCLUSION

The STF could regulate the PI3K/AKT signal pathway to treat the inflammatory injury of Ishikawa cells.