Fresh insight:polish the druggability of lipid metabolism for
anti-renal fibrosis
Abstract
Renal fibrosis can contribute to progressive damage both to renal
structure and function. It is a common pathological process through
which chronic kidney disease develops into kidney failure irrespective
etiologies, and eventually leads to death. However, there is no
available drug to treat renal fibrosis. Lipid aggregation and lipid
toxicity within kidney always tightly accompanied chronic kidney disease
as well as renal fibrosis. Moreover, accumulated studies have revealed
that restoring the defective fatty acid oxidation in the kidney cells
can reduce renal fibrosis. Thus, it is an important strategy to correct
the dysfunctional lipid metabolism in the kidney by targeting critical
regulators of lipid metabolism. This emerging direction brings ideas for
the drug target determination to prevent or treat renal fibrosis, which
may create bona fide drugs for this thorny disease burden. In this
review, we highlight the potential “druggability” of lipid metabolism
to resist renal fibrosis and provide current preclinical evidence,
exemplified by some representative druggable targets and several other
metabolic regulators with anti-renal fibrosis roles. Then we introduce
the preliminary progress of noncoding RNAs and phytochemicals as
promising anti-renal fibrosis drug targets or drugs from the perspective
of lipid metabolism. Finally, we discuss the prospects and deficiencies
of interfering with lipid reprogramming in the kidney.