Engineered synbiotic microspheres enable system-level reprogramming of the gut-immune-vascular axis in chronic inflammatory vascular disease.
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.
Authors
- Junchao Yu
- Weiqian Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3819-7841)
- Mengqian Zhai
- Shiji Fang
- S. Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8242-0867)
- Minjiang Chen
- Jianhua Wu
- Gaofeng Shu
- Zhangyu Yang
- Ziyu Pang
- Zijian Fang
- Yingtao Hu
- Jiahui Xu
- Lingchun Lv
- Lin Shen
- Jian Xu
- Chenying Lu
- Jiansong Ji
- Xingru Ding
- Yang Yang
Institutions
- Wenzhou Medical University (CN)
- Lishui University (CN)
- Lishui Central Hospital (CN)
- Hangzhou Medical College (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- PubMed
- Published
- 2026-11-06
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeg1718
- Primary Topic
- Gut microbiota and health
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00