Fig. 4: Candesartan-induced protein changes in EVs enriched by astrocytic origin.

A Volcano plot showing the differential protein expression analysis of aEVs post-CAND vs. aEVs pre-CAND. The x-axis represents the log₂ fold change, indicating the magnitude of upregulation (right) or downregulation (left), while the y-axis displays the −log₁₀(p value), reflecting statistical significance. Upregulated genes (red) and downregulated genes (green) meet the significance threshold, while non-significant genes (gray) remain unchanged. B Heatmap representing the expression levels of differentially expressed proteins in aEVs after candesartan treatment. The x-axis corresponds to individual patients, with the first five samples representing the pre-treatment condition and the last five the post-treatment condition. The y-axis lists the proteins that exhibit significant changes in expression. The color scale indicates relative protein abundance, with blue representing downregulation, red representing upregulation, and white denoting intermediate expression levels. C Protein-protein interaction network generated using the STRING database, illustrating functional associations among key dysregulated proteins. Line colors represent different types of functional associations. D Gene Ontology (GO) pathway enrichment analysis. The bubble plot illustrates significantly enriched molecular functions. The Y-axis lists the enriched GO categories, while the X-axis represents the signal strength, indicating the enrichment level of each category. Bubble size corresponds to the number of genes associated with each category, and the background color reflects the False Discovery Rate (FDR), where lighter shades indicate higher statistical significance. Larger bubbles denote a greater number of associated proteins. This analysis highlights key molecular functions affected in the study an their statistical relevance.