Effects of Silencing Transforming Growth Factor-β1 by RNA Interference Plasmid on Rat Renal Allograft Fibrosis Using Smads Pathway

Our results suggest that short hairpin RNA-TGF-β1 plasmid could prevent the fibrosis of renal allografts. The mechanism might be associated with its effects of downregulating phosphorylated Smad3 and upregulating phosphorylated Smad7, leading to the suppression of epithelial-myofibroblast transdifferentiation and extracellular matrix synthesis.