Xiaoli Cui

Pharmacologist at Beihua University who studies how plant-derived compounds protect the kidney and heart from damage caused by high blood pressure in mice

Department of Pharmacology, College of Pharmacy, Beihua University, Jilin (papers 2026)

High blood pressure slowly damages the kidney. In the Atlas study CUI2026 in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Xiaoli Cui was first author. Mice received angiotensin II, a hormone that raises blood pressure and injures the kidney. Treatment with forsythoside A, a compound from the medicinal plant Forsythia, protected the kidney. The team reports that forsythoside A binds a protein called ASCL1 and so blocks a downstream CCNB1/mTOR axis. With mTOR held back, the cells cleared more damaged mitochondria (mitophagy) and suffered less ferroptosis, an iron-dependent form of cell death. Blood pressure itself did not fall, so the protection came from inside the kidney cells. The work was done in mice and cells.

Cui works in the Department of Pharmacology of the College of Pharmacy at Beihua University in Jilin, China, with Mengyang Wang, the senior author of CUI2026. In 2026 the same group reported that fangchinoline, an alkaloid from the plant Stephania tetrandra, protected mouse hearts from angiotensin II-induced heart failure through mitophagy and less ferroptosis, and that schisandrin B eased fatty liver disease in mice through the receptor PPAR-gamma. No official profile page was found, so the career path before 2026 is not known.

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