{"doi":"10.1155/2023/8241899","title":"miR-33a Expression Attenuates ABCA1-Dependent Cholesterol Efflux and Promotes Macrophage-Like Cell Transdifferentiation in Cultured Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells","abstract":"Recent evidence suggests that the majority of cholesterol-laden cells found in atherosclerotic lesions are vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) that have transdifferentiated into macrophage-like cells (MLC). Furthermore, cholesterol-laden MLC of VSMC origin have demonstrated impaired ABCA1-dependent cholesterol efflux, but it is poorly understood why this occurs. A possible mechanism which may at least partially be attributed to cholesterol-laden MLC demonstrating attenuated ABCA1-dependent cholesterol efflux is a miR-33a expression, as a primary function of this microRNA is to silence ABCA1 expression, but this has yet to be rigorously investigated. Therefore, the VSMC line MOVAS cells were used to generate miR-33a knockout (KO) MOVAS cells, and we used KO and wild-type (WT) MOVAS cells to delineate any possible proatherogenic role of miR-33a expression in VSMC. When WT and KO MOVAS cells were cholesterol-loaded to convert into MLC, this resulted in the WT MOVAS cells to exhibit impaired ABCA1-dependent cholesterol efflux. In the cholesterol-loaded WT MOVAS MLC, we also observed a delayed restoration of the VSMC phenotype when these cells were exposed to the ABCA1 cholesterol acceptor, apoAI. These results imply that miR-33a expression in VSMC drives atherosclerosis by triggering MLC transdifferentiation via attenuated ABCA1-dependent cholesterol efflux.","journal":"Journal of Lipids","year":2023,"id":344533,"datarank":0.40620753016533157,"base_score":2.70805020110221,"endowment":2.70805020110221,"self_citation_contribution":0.40620753016533157,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.40620753016533157,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":14,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.948,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":937594,"name":"Olanrewaju Oladosu","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":674842,"name":"Jing Echesabal-Chen","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":464077,"name":"Rhonda R. Powell","orcid":"0000-0001-5813-2610","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":464078,"name":"Terri Bruce","orcid":"0000-0002-7672-4289","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":674349,"name":"Alexis Stamatikos","orcid":"0000-0003-0162-8521","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1083336,"name":"Ikechukwu C. Esobi","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":62,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:11:30.951510Z","pmid":"37359759","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}