The anti-inflammatory peptide Catestatin blocks chemotaxis

A deep learning model for anti-inflammatory peptides identification based on deep variational autoencoder and contrastive learning

As a class of biologically active molecules with significant immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory effects, anti-inflammatory peptides have important application value in the medical and biotechnology fields due to their unique biological functions. Research on the identification of anti-inflammatory peptides provides important theoretical foundations and practical value for a deeper understanding of the biological mechanisms of inflammation and immune regulation, as well as for the development of new drugs and biotechnological applications. Therefore, it is necessary to develop more advanced computational models for identifying anti-inflammatory peptides. In this study, we propose a deep learning model named DAC-AIPs based on variational autoencoder and contrastive learning for accurate identification of anti-inflammatory peptides. In the sequence encoding part, the incorporation of multi-hot encoding helps capture richer sequence information. The autoencoder, composed of convolutional layers and linear layers, can learn latent features and reconstruct features, with variational inference enhancing the representation capability of latent features. Additionally, the introduction of contrastive learning aims to improve the model's classification ability. Through cross-validation and independent dataset testing experiments, DAC-AIPs achieves superior performance compared to existing state-of-the-art models. In cross-validation, the classification accuracy of DAC-AIPs reached around 88%, which is 7% higher than previous models. Furthermore, various ablation experiments and interpretability experiments validate the effectiveness of DAC-AIPs. Finally, a user-friendly online predictor is designed to enhance the practicality of the model, and the server is freely accessible at http://dac-aips.online .

Reduction in CgA-Derived CST Protein Level in HTR-8/SVneo and BeWo Trophoblastic Cell Lines Caused by the Preeclamptic Environment

One of the most dangerous complications of pregnancy is preeclampsia (PE), a disease associated with a high risk of maternal and fetal mortality and morbidity. Although its etiology remains unknown, the placenta is believed to be at the center of ongoing changes. One of the hormones produced by the placenta is chromogranin A (CgA). Thus far, its role in pregnancy and pregnancy-related disorders is enigmatic, yet it is known that both CgA and its derived peptide catestatin (CST) are involved in the majority of the processes that are disturbed in PE, such as blood pressure regulation or apoptosis. Therefore, in this study, the influence of the preeclamptic environment on the production of CgA using two cell lines, HTR-8/SVneo and BeWo, was investigated. Furthermore, the capacity of trophoblastic cells to secrete CST to the environment was tested, as well as the correlation between CST and apoptosis. This study provided the first evidence that CgA and CST proteins are produced by trophoblastic cell lines and that the PE environment has an impact on CST protein production. Furthermore, a strong negative correlation between CST protein level and apoptosis induction was found. Hence, both CgA and its derived peptide CST may play roles in the complex process of PE pathogenesis.

The association of catestatin and endocan with the effects of cardiac shock wave therapy: Biomarker sub-study of the randomized, sham procedure-controlled trial

Introduction

Cardiac shock-wave therapy (CSWT) is a non-invasive regenerative treatment method based on low-frequency ultrasound waves, which stimulate angiogenesis. Current data about the effects of revascularization procedures on angiogenesis biomarkers is limited. Recently, an association of catestatin and endocan with coronary collateral development was shown in several trials. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the impact of CSWT on the dynamics of catestatin and endocan levels and to assess their correlation with parameters of myocardial perfusion and function.

Methods

Prospective, randomized, triple-blind, sham procedure-controlled study enrolled 72 adult subjects who complied with defined inclusion criteria (NCT02339454). We measured biomarkers in 48 patients with stable angina (24 patients of CSWT group, 24 patients of sham-procedure group). Additionally, patients were divided into responders and non-responders according to improvement in myocardial perfusion and/or contractility assessed by myocardial scintigraphy and dobutamine echocardiography (30 and 13 patients, respectively). The blood samples were collected at baseline, after the last treatment procedure (9th treatment week) and at 6-month follow-up to evaluate biomarkers concentration and stored at -80° until analysis. Serum catestatin and endocan levels were determined by commercially available ELISA kits.

Results

Serum catestatin concentration significantly increased in all patients. While endocan levels significantly decreased in the responders sub-group. The increase in catestatin levels at 9th week and 6 months was positively associated with improvement in summed difference score (rho = 0.356, p = 0.028) and wall motion score, WMS (rho = 0.397, p = 0.009) at 6 months in the whole study population. Meanwhile, the decrease in endocan levels over 6 months was positively correlated with improvement in WMS at 3- and 6- months (r = 0.378, p = 0.015 and r = 0.311, p = 0.045, respectively). ROC analysis revealed that a change at 6 months in catestatin and endocan levels significantly predicted improvement in myocardial perfusion and contractile function with 68.9% sensitivity and 75.0% specificity (p = 0.039) and 51.7% sensitivity, and 91.7% specificity (p = 0.017), respectively. Baseline endocan concentration and its change at 6 months predicted response to CSWT with 68.8% sensitivity and 83.3% specificity (p = 0.039) and 81.3% sensitivity and 100% specificity (p < 0.0001), respectively.

Conclusion

This study demonstrates the association of increase in catestatin and decrease in endocan levels with the improvement of myocardial perfusion and contractile function. The potential predictive value of catestatin and endocan dynamics for the response to regenerative therapy is shown.

Role of Catestatin in the Cardiovascular System and Metabolic Disorders

Catestatin is a multifunctional peptide that is involved in the regulation of the cardiovascular and immune systems as well as metabolic homeostatis. It mitigates detrimental, excessive activity of the sympathetic nervous system by inhibiting catecholamine secretion. Based on in vitro and in vivo studies, catestatin was shown to reduce adipose tissue, inhibit inflammatory response, prevent macrophage-driven atherosclerosis, and regulate cytokine production and release. Clinical studies indicate that catestatin may influence the processes leading to hypertension, affect the course of coronary artery diseases and heart failure. This review presents up-to-date research on catestatin with a particular emphasis on cardiovascular diseases based on a literature search.