Pioglitazone

Human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs) were purchased from Invitrogen (USA). Primary antibodies against p44/42 MAPK (ERK1/2), Phospho-p44/42 MAPK (p-ERK1/2), acetyl CoA carboxylase (ACC), phospho-ACC (p-ACC), Src homology region 2 domain-containing phosphatase-1 (SHP1), carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1a (CPT-1a), fatty acid synthetase (FAS), sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1c (SREBP-1c), or β-actin and horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-conjugated secondary antibody were purchased from Abcam (Cambridge, UK). All cell culture related reagents were obtained from Shanghai Sangon Biotechnology (China). All mRNA generation related reagents were obtained from Shanghai Yeasen Biotechnology (China). All other reagents were purchased from Abcam (Cambridge, UK) or Sigma-Aldrich (Germany) unless otherwise stated. Pioglitazone with purity over 99.5% was purchased from MedChemExpress（USA）
Healthy male Sprague Dawley (SD) rats, weighing 200 ± 20 g, were purchased from Shanghai SLAC Laboratory Animal Co., Ltd. (China, Shanghai). Before the experiment, the animals were adaptively fed with standard rat diet for 1 week at room temperature 23 ± 2 °C. All animal experiments were approved by the Animal Protection and Utilization Committee of Fudan University.

Naringin (catalog number [Cat. no.] HY-N0153), PPARγ agonist pioglitazone (Cat. no. HY-13956), and PPARγ antagonist GW9662 (Cat. no. HY-16578) were all purchased from MedChemExpress (Princeton, NJ, USA). LPS (Cat. no. L2654) was ordered from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA). Phycoerythrin (PE)-anti-F4/80 (Cat. no. 123109; 1:100), allophycocyanin (APC)-anti-CD86 (Cat. no. 105011; 1:100), and APC-anti-CD206 (Cat. no. 141708; 1:100) were purchased from BioLegend (San Diego, CA, USA).

All herbs used in the study were purchased from the Affiliated Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine. GGQLD was composed of 4 herbs – Radix puerariae (batch number: 20170301), Radix scutellariae (batch number: 1610009), Rhizoma coptidis (batch number: 1703015), and Radix glycyrrhizae (batch number: 170109) – at a ratio of 8: 3: 3: 2 (w/w/w/w). The preparation of GGQLD was made according to the method described in the literature [17 (link)]. Pioglitazone was purchased from MedChem Express, China (Cat. No: HY-14601) and configured to a suspension with a final concentration of 2 mg/ml. Each medicine was stored at 4°C until use.