Medical Education and Health Sciences

Biography

Biography: Ning Li

Abstract

Atherosclerosis (AS) is a leading cause of death and loss of productive

life worldwide. The immature form of High-density lipoprotein (HDL)

has been shown advantageous in improving plaque targeting and antiAS

efficacy. However, the prohibitive cost of ApoA-I protein used to

generate functional HDL and the time-consuming procedure of HDL

synthesis impeded its clinical application. Though HDL mimic peptides

are capable of fulfilling HDL function with a dramatic low-cost, their

instability in vivo failed to put their utilization into practice. Our current

study was designed to synthesize peptide-based HDL (pHDL) in order

to increase in vivo stability of peptides by incorporating with

phospholipids. PHDL produced by microfluidics resulted in discoidal

nano-scale particles, showing of 37.8 nm diameter, 0.275 PdI and -4.17

mV zeta potential. Using in vivo imaging system, FITC-labeled pHDL

was highly recruited to the aorta of AS model ApoE-/- mice compared

to C57BL/6 control mice，24 hrs post-intraperitoneal injection.

Intraperitoneal administration of pHDL to ApoE-/- mice twice per week

for 12 weeks reduced more than 40% plasma TG, TC and LDL-C, which

leads to 40% reduction of aortic plaques. In addition, increase of

plasma ALT, AST and creatinine in ApoE-/- mice were largely

improved by pHDL treatment, indicating a general protective effect of

pHDL. In conclusion, pHDL represents an affordable alternative of

HDL, in terms of plaque-targeting and anti-AS effects.