Aristolochic acids - Induced transcriptomic responses in rat renal proximal tubule cells in vitro

Aristolochic acids (AAs) are the active components of herbal drugs derived from Aristolochia species that have been used for medicinal purposes since antiquity. However, AAs have recently been discovered to be highly nephrotoxic and induced urothelial cancer in humans and malignant tumors in the kidney and urinary tract of rodents. In this study, we exposed rat renal proximal tubule cells in vitro to a sub-cytotoxic level of AAs at three different time points (6 h, 24 h and 72 h). We then analyzed the gene expression profile after the compound exposure. Functional analysis with Ingenuity Pathways Analysis and DAVID tools revealed that at the late time point (72 h) there are many significantly altered genes involved in cancer-related pathways such as p53 signaling. MIAMI-compliant microarray data are deposited in the NCBI GEO database under accession number GSE68687 and can be found at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE68687.