Trehalose inhibits proliferation while activates apoptosis and autophagy in rat airway smooth muscle cells.

Abstract Trehalose is a disaccharide with multiple important biological activities. In many cell types, Trehalose regulates the physiological behaviors of proliferation, apoptosis and autophagy. But the effects of trehalose on ASMCs have never been reported. Here, we showed that trehalose activated autophagy of ASMCs at low dose, inhibited proliferation and induced apoptosis of ASMCs at high dose. Further study, we found the cell cycle was arrested in S and G2\M phases, the expression of CyclinA1 and CyclinB1 decreased. Then, we investigated the ratio of Bcl-2/Bax was drastically reduced. Next, we detected an important transcription factor TFEB, which is closely related to autophagy. We found TFEB was highly activated with trehalose treatment. And many downstream autophagy-related genes of TFEB were also up-regulated. In summary, trehalose plays an important role on the regulation of proliferation, apoptosis and autophagy of ASMCs.