Protective effects and bioinformatic analysis of narciclasine on vascular aging via cross-talk between inflammation and metabolism through inhibiting skeletal muscle-specific ceramide synthase 1

The senescence of smooth muscle is one of the independent risk factors in atherosclerosis progression in which the vascular inflammation plays an important role on vascular dysfunction. This study is designed to explore the novel vascular aging biomarkers and screen the potential molecular interventional targets through bioinformatic analysis. Transcriptional analysis was conducted based on the GSE16487 open access database, which included 15 human vascular tissue samples from two groups: young group (≤ 60 years old, n = 8) and aged group (≥ 75 years old, n = 7). There were 275 differential expression genes (119 upregulated and 156 downregulated genes) with minimum 1.5-fold change between two groups. 9 genes were mainly participated in inflammation-related signaling pathways, in which narciclasine was validated as the most effective candidate for modulation the ceramide synthesis. In vitro and animal study demonstrated that narciclasine reversed vascular aging by inhibiting skeletal muscle-specific ceramide synthase 1 (CerS1), reducing the ceramide level derived from CerS1, and improving fat deposition and circulating glycolipid metabolism. Narciclasine attenuates vascular aging and modulates the cross-talk between inflammation and metabolism via inhibiting skeletal muscle-specific ceramide synthase 1. •Nine novel biomarkers were screened through bioinformatic analysis and validated in senescent VSMCs.•The 10 potential drugs were identified for alleviating vascular aging based on cMAP database.•Narciclasine can suppress CerS1 and derived C18:0-ceramide to alleviate inflammatory vascular aging.