ANP promotes HTR‐8/SVneo cell invasion by upregulating protein kinase N 3 via autophagy inhibition

Abstract Preeclampsia is a gestational disease characterized by two major pathological changes‐shallow trophoblast invasion and impaired spiral artery remodeling. Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) is a kind of peptide hormone that regulates blood pressure, while the lack of active ANP participates in preeclampsia pathogenesis. However, the underlying mechanism of how ANP modulates trophoblasts function remains unclarified. Here, we performed isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ) in ANP‐treated HTR‐8/SVneo cells and identified Protein Kinase 3 (PKN3) as the downstream factor of ANP, which was downregulated in preeclamptic placenta. Chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis and luciferase assays showed that NFYA was one of the transcription factors for the PKN3 promoter, which was also regulated by ANP treatment in HTR‐8/SVneo cells. Transmission electron microscopy and Western Blotting in HTR‐8/SVneo cells indicated that ANP inhibited autophagy via AMPK‐mTORC1 signaling, while excess autophagy was observed in preeclamptic placenta. The increased expression of PKN3 and enhanced cell invasion ability in HTR‐8/SVneo cells induced by ANP could be abolished by autophagy activation or transfection with PKN3 shRNA or NFYA shRNA or NPR‐A shRNA via regulating the invasion‐related genes and the epithelial mesenchymal transition molecules. Our results demonstrated that ANP could enhance trophoblast invasion by upregulating PKN3 via NFYA promotion through autophagy inhibition in an AMPK/mTORC1 signaling‐dependent manner.