Engineered probiotics Clostridium butyricum‐pMTL007‐GLP‐1 improves blood pressure via producing GLP‐1 and modulating gut microbiota in spontaneous hypertension rat models

Hypertension is a significant risk factor of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) with high prevalence worldwide, the current treatment has multiple adverse effects and requires continuous administration. The glucagon‐like peptide‐1 receptor (GLP‐1R) agonists have shown great potential in treating diabetes mellitus, neurodegenerative diseases, obesity and hypertension. Butyric acid is a potential target in treating hypertension. Yet, the application of GLP‐1 analogue and butyric acid in reducing blood pressure and reversing ventricular hypertrophy remains untapped. In this study, we combined the therapeutic capability of GLP‐1 and butyric acid by transforming Clostridium butyricum (CB) with recombinant plasmid pMTL007 encoded with hGLP gene to construct the engineered probiotics Clostridium butyricum‐pMTL007‐GLP‐1 (CB‐GLP‐1). We used spontaneous hypertensive rat (SHR) models to evaluate the positive effect of this strain in treating hypertension. The results revealed that the intragastric administration of CB‐GLP‐1 had markedly reduced blood pressure and improved cardiac marker ACE2, AT2R, AT1R, ANP, BNP, β‐MHC, α‐SMA and activating AMPK/mTOR/p70S6K/4EBP1 signalling pathway. The high‐throughput sequencing further demonstrated that CB‐GLP‐1 treatments significantly improved the dysbiosis in the SHR rats via downregulating the relative abundance of Porphyromonadaceae at the family level and upregulating Lactobacillus at the genus level. Hence, we concluded that the CB‐GLP‐1 greatly improves blood pressure and cardiomegaly by restoring the gut microbiome and reducing ventricular hypertrophy in rat models. This is the first time using engineered CB in treating hypertension, which provides a new idea for the clinical treatment of hypertension.