**5. Conclusions**

The nutraceutical effect of C-PE on HgCl2-induced AKI stems from its antioxidant activity, which reduces the level of oxidative stress markers and maintains the redox environment. Additionally, C-PE modulates intracellular signaling pathways involved in proteostasis, avoiding the disruption of podocytes and damage to glomerular and tubular cells. Hence, the nephroprotective activity of C-PE is related to the prevention of oxidative stress and ER stress in the kidney of animals intoxicated with mercury. The nutraceutical effect may also be related to anti-inflammatory activity, possibly triggering autophagy as a survival pathway linked to the unfolded protein response. This mechanism is worthy of greater attention in future research.

**Author Contributions:** V.B.-V. and P.R.-F.: Methodology, data curation, writing of the original draft and funding acquisition; J.I.S.-C.: Writing of the original draft, reviewing and editing; A.A.S.: Methodology, data curation, reviewing and editing the manuscript; C.G.-H.: Methodology; M.F.-C. and E.C.-E.: Conceptualization, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition, writing of the original draft, review and editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This study was supported by SIP-IPN (grant numbers 20210052, 20210080, 20210787, and 20210743). The APC was funded by Imperial College London.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The experimental procedures were in accordance with the Official Mexican Norm (NOM-062-ZOO-1999, technical specifications for the production, care, and use of laboratory animals) [35]. The protocol was approved by the institutional Internal Bioethics Committee (ZOO-013-2021).

**Data Availability Statement:** Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/15HqGDpXfEdC6\_lv9RdAO3cq8glJocEbF/view? usp=sharing, accessed on 2 October 2021].

**Acknowledgments:** We thank the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Secretaría de Investigación y Posgrado-IPN, for financial support. The Mexican researchers are fellows of EDI, COFAA, and SNI. JISC is supported by the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre (BRC).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
