Engineered synbiotic microspheres enable system-level reprogramming of the gut-immune-vascular axis in chronic inflammatory vascular disease
Lin Shen1,2,3, Mengqian Zhai1,4, Zhangyu Yang1,4
1Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Imaging and Interventional Medicine, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Lishui 323000, China.
Abstract:
Chronic inflammatory vascular diseases are increasingly recognized as systemic disorders sustained by maladaptive cross-organ immunometabolic coupling, yet current therapeutic strategies remain largely lesion-centered and fail to address upstream drivers of disease persistence. Here, we identify the gut-immune-vascular axis as a system-level pathogenic unit that integrates gut microbial dysbiosis, intestinal barrier dysfunction, metabolic imbalance, and vascular immune activation into a self-reinforcing pathological circuit. Through integrated clinical profiling and cross-species validation, we demonstrate that disruption of this axis is characterized by coordinated probiotic depletion, expansion of proinflammatory taxa, translocation of microbial endotoxins, accumulation of microbiota-derived metabolites, and macrophage polarization toward a proinflammatory phenotype along the gut-vascular continuum. To therapeutically target this axis, we engineer enzyme-responsive synbiotic microspheres that codeliver probiotics, a microbial metabolic pathway inhibitor, and a prebiotic within a protective polymeric matrix, enabling site-specific intestinal activation and coordinated microbiota-metabolic modulation. This engineered system restores intestinal barrier integrity, reprograms microbial ecology and metabolite output, suppresses immunometabolic dysfunction, and robustly attenuates pathological vascular remodeling across cellular, murine, and large-animal models, with in-stent restenosis serving as a representative disease context. Collectively, this work establishes axis-oriented immunometabolic reprogramming as a generalizable therapeutic paradigm and highlights engineered synbiotic platforms as scalable tools for system-level intervention in chronic inflammatory diseases.
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