Jasminoidin and ursodeoxycholic acid exert synergistic effect against cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury via Dectin-1-induced NF-κB activation pathway

Background: Jasminoidin (JA) and ursodeoxycholic acid (UA) were shown to act synergistically against ischemic stroke (IS) in our previous studies. Purpose: To investigate the holistic synergistic mechanism of JA and UA on cerebral ischemia. Methods: Middle cerebral artery obstruction reperfusion (MCAO/R) mice were used to evaluate the efficacy of JA, UA, and JA combined with UA (JU) using neurological function testing and infarct volume examination. High-hroughput RNA-seq combined with computational prediction and function-integrated analysis was conducted to gain insight into the comprehensive mechanism of synergy. The core mechanism was validated using western blotting. Results: JA and UA synergistically reduced cerebral infarct volume and alleviated neurological deficits and pathological changes in MCAO/R mice. A total of 1437, 396, 1080, and 987 differentially expressed genes were identified in the vehicle, JA, UA, and JU groups, respectively. A strong synergistic effect between JA and UA was predicted using chemical similarity analysis, target profile comparison, and semantic similarity analysis. As the `long-tail' drugs, the top 20 gene ontology (GO) biological processes of JA, UA, and JU groups primarily reflected inflammatory response and regulation of cytokine production, with specific GO terms of JU revealing enhanced regulation on immune response and tumor necrosis factor superfamily cytokine production. Comparably, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) signaling of common targets of JA, UA, and JU focused on extracellular matrix organization and signaling by interleukins, immune system, phagosomes, and lysosomes, which interlock and interweave to produce the synergistic effects of JU. The characteristic signaling pathway identified for JU highlighted the crosstalk between autophagy activation and inflammatory pathways, especially the Dectin-1-induced NF-kappa B activation pathway, which was validated by in vivo experiments. Conclusions: JA and UA can synergistically protect cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury by attenuating Dectin-1-induced NF-kappa B activation. The strategy integrating high throughput data with computational models enables ever-finer mapping of `long-tail' drugs to dynamic variations in condition-specific omics to clarify synergistic mechanisms.