SMAD3 and renal fibrosis: Chen et al. (2022) showed that GB alleviates diabetic nephropathy in mice by reducing BUN and urinary albumin, thereby improving renal function. GB also mitigates renal histological damage by inhibiting GPX4 ubiquitination and lowering iron and ROS levels. HDG, extracted from Acanthopanax senticosus (Ciwujia), protects against ferroptosis and renal fibrosis by inhibiting NOX4 and p-Smad3 in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic nephropathy (DN) model (Jia et al., 2024).