Effect of guaianolides in the meiosis reinitiation of amphibian oocytes

Zygote ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Zapata-Martínez ◽  
G. Sánchez-Toranzo ◽  
F. Chaín ◽  
C.A.N. Catalán ◽  
M.I. Bühler

SummarySesquiterpene lactones (STLs) are a large and structurally diverse group of plant metabolites generally found in the Asteraceae family. STLs exhibit a wide spectrum of biological activities and it is generally accepted that their major mechanism of action is the alkylation of the thiol groups of biological molecules. The guaianolides is one of various groups of STLs. Anti-tumour and anti-migraine effects, an allergenic agent, an inhibitor of smooth muscle cells and of meristematic cell proliferation are only a few of the most commonly reported activities of STLs. In amphibians, fully grown ovarian oocytes are arrested at the beginning of meiosis I. Under stimulus with progesterone, this meiotic arrest is released and meiosis progresses to metaphase II, a process known as oocyte maturation. There are previous records of the inhibitory effect of dehydroleucodin (DhL), a guaianolide lactone, on the progression of meiosis. It has been also shown that DhL and its 11,13-dihydroderivative (2H-DhL; a mixture of epimers at C-11) act as blockers of the resumption of meiosis in fully grown ovarian oocytes from the amphibian Rhinella arenarum (formerly classified as Bufo arenarum). The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of four closely related guaianolides, i.e., DhL, achillin, desacetoxymatricarin and estafietin as possible inhibitors of meiosis in oocytes of amphibians in vitro and discuss some structure–activity relationships. It was found that the inhibitory effect on meiosis resumption is greater when the lactone has two potentially reactive centres, either a α,β–α′,β′-diunsaturated cyclopentanone moiety or an epoxide group plus an exo-methylene-γ-lactone function.

Zygote ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-411
Author(s):  
G. Sánchez-Toranzo ◽  
J. Zapata-Martínez ◽  
C. Catalán ◽  
M.I. Bühler

SummaryThe sesquiterpene lactones (STLs) are a large class of plant secondary metabolites that are generally found in the Asteraceae family and that have high diversity with respect to chemical structure as well as biological activity. STLs have been classified into different groups, such as guaianolides, germacranolides, and melampolides etc., based on their carboxylic skeleton. In amphibians, fully grown ovarian oocytes are arrested at the beginning of meiosis I. Under the stimulus of progesterone, this meiotic arrest is released and meiosis progresses to metaphase II, a process known as oocyte maturation. The purpose of this work was to determine whether sesquiterpene lactones from the germacranolide and melampolide groups act as inhibitor agents on the meiosis of amphibian oocytes in vitro. Results for germacranolides indicated that the addition of deoxyelephantopins caused a high degree of inhibition and that minimolide showed a moderate inhibitory effect, whereas glaucolide A was inactive. Furthermore, the addition of melampolides (uvedalin, enhydrin, polymatin A and polymatin B) showed inhibitory effects. For enhydrin and uvedalin, inhibitory effects were observed at the higher concentrations assayed. The results of this study suggest that the inhibitory activity of the tested sesquiterpene lactones on the meiosis of Rhinella arenarum oocytes is not dependent on the group to which they belong, i.e. not on the carboxylic skeleton, but probably due to the arrangement and type of function groups present in the molecules. All assayed lactones in the germacranolide group showed low toxicity. In contrast, important differences in toxicity were observed for lactones from the melampolide group: enhydrin and uvedalin showed low toxicity, but polymatin A and B were highly toxic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullah M. Alnuqaydan ◽  
Bilal Rah

Background:Tamarix Articulata (T. articulata), commonly known as Tamarisk or Athal in Arabic region, belongs to the Tamaricaece species. It is an important halophytic medicinal plant and a good source of polyphenolic phytochemical(s). In traditional medicines, T. articulata extract is commonly used, either singly or in combination with other plant extracts against different ailments since ancient times.Methods:Electronic database survey via Pubmed, Google Scholar, Researchgate, Scopus and Science Direct were used to review the scientific inputs until October 2018, by searching appropriate keywords. Literature related to pharmacological activities of T. articulata, Tamarix species, phytochemical analysis of T. articulata, biological activities of T. articulata extracts. All of these terms were used to search the scientific literature associated with T. articulata; the dosage of extract, route of administration, extract type, and in-vitro and in-vivo model.Results:Numerous reports revealed that T. articulata contains a wide spectrum of phytochemical(s), which enables it to have a wide window of biological properties. Owing to the presence of high content of phytochemical compounds like polyphenolics and flavonoids, T. articulata is a potential source of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antiproliferative properties. In view of these pharmacological properties, T. articulata could be a potential drug candidate to treat various clinical conditions including cancer in the near future.Conclusion:In this review, the spectrum of phytochemical(s) has been summarized for their pharmacological properties and the mechanisms of action, and the possible potential therapeutic applications of this plant against various diseases discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parvesh Singh ◽  
Nomandla Ngcoya ◽  
Ramgopal Mopuri ◽  
Nagaraju Kerru ◽  
Neha Manhas ◽  
...  

Background: Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a complex metabolic disease illustrated by abnormally high levels of plasma glucose or hyperglycaemia. Accordingly, several α-glucosidase inhibitors have been developed for the treatment of diabetes and other degenerative disorders. While, a coumarin ring has the privilege to represent numerous natural and synthetic compounds with a wide spectrum of biological activities e.g. anti-cancer, anti-HIV, anti-viral, anti-malarial, anti-microbial, anti-convulsant, anti-hypertensive properties. Besides this, coumarins have also shown potential to inhibit α-glucosidase leading to a generation of new promising antidiabetic agents. However, the testing of O-substituted coumarins for α-glucosidase inhibition has evaded the attention of medicinal chemists. Methods: For O-alkylation/acetylation reactions, the hydroxyl coumarins (A-B) initially activated by K2CO3 in dry DMF were reacted with variedly substituted haloalkanes at room temperature under nitrogen. The synthesized compounds were tested for their α-glucosidase (from Saccharomyces cerevisiae) inhibitory activity and anti-oxidant activity using DPPH radical scavenging activity. In silico docking simulations were conducted using CDocker module in DS (Accelrys) to explore the binding modes of the representative compounds in the catalytic site of α-glucosidase. Results: All the coumarin analogues (A1, B1, A2-A10, B2-B8) including their precursors (A-B) were evaluated for their in vitro α-glucosidase inhibition using acarbose as a standard inhibitor. All the mono O-alkylated coumarins (except A1) showed significant (p <0.05) α-glucosidase inhibition relative to the hydroxyl coumarin (A) with IC50 values ranging between 11.084±0.117 to 145.24± 29.22 µg/mL. Compound 7-(benzyloxy)-4, 5-dimethyl-2H-chromen-2-one (A9) bearing a benzyl group (Ph-CH2-) at position 7 showed a remarkable (p <0.05) increase in the activity (IC50 = 11.084±0.117 µg/mL), almost four-fold more than acarbose (IC50 = 40.578±5.999 µg/mL). The introduction of –NO2 group dramatically improved the anti-oxidant activity of coumarin, while the O-alkylation/acetylation decreased the activity. Conclusion: The present study describes the synthesis of functionalized coumarins and their evaluation for α-glucosidase inhibition and antioxidant activity under in vitro conditions. Based on IC50 data, the mono O-alkylated coumarins were observed to be stronger inhibitors of α-glucosidase with respect to their bis O-alkylated analogues. Coumarin (A9) bearing O-benzyloxy group displayed the strongest α-glucosidase inhibition, even higher than the standard inhibitor acarbose. The coumarin (A10) bearing –NO2 group showed the highest anti-oxidant activity amongst the synthesized compounds, almost comparable to the ascorbic acid. Finally, in silico docking simulations revealed the role of hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic forces in locking the compounds in catalytic site of α-glucosidase.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (16) ◽  
pp. 1949-1965 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Szkaradek ◽  
Daniel Sypniewski ◽  
Dorota Żelaszczyk ◽  
Sabina Gałka ◽  
Paulina Borzdziłowska ◽  
...  

Background: Natural plant metabolites and their semisynthetic derivatives have been used for years in cancer therapy. Xanthones are oxygenated heterocyclic compounds produced as secondary metabolites by higher plants, fungi or lichens. Xanthone core may serve as a template in the synthesis of many derivatives that have broad biological activities. Objective: This study synthesized a series of 17 new xanthones, and their anticancer potential was also evaluated. Methods: The anticancer potential was evaluated in vitro using a highly invasive T24 cancer cell line. Direct cytotoxic effects of the xanthones were established by IC50 estimation based on XTT assay. Results: 5 compounds of the total 17 showed significant cytotoxicity toward the studied cancer cultures and were submitted to further detailed analysis, including studies examining their influence on gelatinase A and B expression, as well as on the cancer cells migration and adhesion to an extracellular matrix. These analyses were carried out on five human tumor cell lines: A2780 (ovarian cancer), A549 (lung cancer), HeLa (cervical cancer), Hep G2 (liver cancer), and T24 (urinary bladder cancer). All the compounds, especially 4, showed promising anticancer activity: they exhibited significant cytotoxicity towards all the evaluated cell lines, including MCF-7 breast cancer, and hindered migration-motility activity of cancer cells demonstrating more potent activity than α-mangostin which served as a reference xanthone. Conclusion: These results suggest that our xanthone derivatives may be further analyzed in order to include them in cancer treatment protocols.


Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 991
Author(s):  
Melanie S. Matos ◽  
José D. Anastácio ◽  
Cláudia Nunes dos Santos

Inflammation is a crucial and complex process that reestablishes the physiological state after a noxious stimulus. In pathological conditions the inflammatory state may persist, leading to chronic inflammation and causing tissue damage. Sesquiterpene lactones (SLs) are composed of a large and diverse group of highly bioactive plant secondary metabolites, characterized by a 15-carbon backbone structure. In recent years, the interest in SLs has risen due to their vast array of biological activities beneficial for human health. The anti-inflammatory potential of these compounds results from their ability to target and inhibit various key pro-inflammatory molecules enrolled in diverse inflammatory pathways, and prevent or reduce the inflammatory damage on tissues. Research on the anti-inflammatory mechanisms of SLs has thrived over the last years, and numerous compounds from diverse plants have been studied, using in silico, in vitro, and in vivo assays. Besides their anti-inflammatory potential, their cytotoxicity, structure–activity relationships, and pharmacokinetics have been investigated. This review aims to gather the most relevant results and insights concerning the anti-inflammatory potential of SL-rich extracts and pure SLs, focusing on their effects in different inflammatory pathways and on different molecular players.


1997 ◽  
Vol 273 (6) ◽  
pp. E1127-E1132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascal Fragner ◽  
Olivier Presset ◽  
Nicole Bernad ◽  
Jean Martinez ◽  
Claude Roze ◽  
...  

The tripeptide pyro-Glu-His-Pro-NH2[thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH)] was isolated from the hypothalamus as a thyrotropin-releasing factor. It has a broad spectrum of central nervous system-mediated actions, including the stimulation of exocrine pancreatic secretion. TRH is also synthesized in the endocrine pancreas and found in the systemic circulation. Enzymatic degradation of TRH in vivo produces other bioactive peptides such as cyclo(His-Pro). Because of the short half-life of TRH and the stability of cyclo(His-Pro) in vivo, we postulated that at least part of the peripheral TRH effects on the exocrine pancreatic secretion may be attributed to cyclo(His-Pro), which has been shown to have other biological activities. This study determines in parallel the peripheral effects of TRH and cyclo(His-Pro) as well as the putative contribution of other TRH-related peptides on exocrine pancreatic secretion in rats. TRH and its metabolite cyclo(His-Pro) dose dependently inhibited 2-deoxy-d-glucose (2-DG)-stimulated pancreatic secretion. TRH and all the related peptides tested had no effect on the basal and cholecystokinin-stimulated amylase release from pancreatic acinar cells in vitro. These data indicate that cyclo(His-Pro) mimics the peripheral inhibitory effect of TRH on 2-DG-stimulated exocrine pancreatic secretion. This effect is not detected on isolated pancreatic acini. Our findings provide a new biological contribution for cyclo(His-Pro) with potential experimental and clinical applications.


Molecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 1078 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Bittner Fialová ◽  
Martin Kello ◽  
Matúš Čoma ◽  
Lívia Slobodníková ◽  
Eva Drobná ◽  
...  

On its own, rosmarinic acid possesses multiple biological activities such as anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, cardioprotective and antitumor properties, and these are the consequence of its ROS scavenging and inhibitory effect on inflammation. In this study, two quaternary phosphonium salts of rosmarinic acid were prepared for the purpose of increasing its penetration into biological systems with the aim of improving its antimicrobial, antifungal, antiprotozoal and antitumor activity. The synthetized molecules, the triphenylphosphonium and tricyclohexylphosphonium salts of rosmarinic acid, exhibited significantly stronger inhibitory effects on the growth of HCT116 cells with IC50 values of 7.28 or 8.13 μM in comparison to the initial substance, rosmarinic acid (>300 μM). For the synthesized derivatives, we detected a greater than three-fold increase of activity against Acanthamoeba quina, and a greater than eight-fold increase of activity against A. lugdunensis in comparison to rosmarinic acid. Furthermore, we recorded significantly higher antimicrobial activity of the synthetized derivatives when compared to rosmarinic acid itself. Both synthetized quaternary phosphonium salts of rosmarinic acid appear to be promising antitumor and antimicrobial agents, as well as impressive molecules for further research.


2020 ◽  
pp. jcs.217356
Author(s):  
Paweł Szczęśniak ◽  
Tamara Henke ◽  
Suada Fröhlich ◽  
Uwe Plessmann ◽  
Henning Urlaub ◽  
...  

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) and its homologue D-dopachrome tautomerase (D-DT) are ubiquitous, pro-inflammatory cytokines with chemokine-like functions that coordinate a wide spectrum of biological activities like migration. Here, we biotin-tagged intracellular MIF/D-DT in vivo to identify important cytosolic interactors and found a plethora of actin cytoskeleton-associated proteins. While the CD74/CD44 receptor complex is essential for signalling transduction in fibroblasts by extracellular MIF/D-DT, our interactome data rather suggested direct effects. We thus investigated whether MIF/D-DT can modulate cell migration independent of CD74/CD44. To differentiate between receptor- and non-receptor-mediated motility, we treated fibroblasts that are deficient in CD74 and CD44 or that express both proteins with recombinant MIF/D-DT. Interestingly, only MIF could stimulate chemokinesis in the presence or absence of CD74/CD44. The pro-migratory effects of MIF depended on lipid raft/caveolae-mediated but not clathrin-mediated endocytosis, on its tautomerase activity and, likely, on its thiol protein oxidoreductase activity. As MIF treatment restrained actin polymerisation in vitro our findings establish a new intracellular role for MIF/D-DT in driving cell motility by modulating the actin cytoskeleton.


Metabolites ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hammad Ismail ◽  
Anna L. Gillespie ◽  
Danielle Calderwood ◽  
Haroon Iqbal ◽  
Colene Gallagher ◽  
...  

Plant secondary metabolites are protective dietary constituents and rol genes evidently increase the synthesis of these versatile phytochemicals. This study subjected a globally important vegetable, lettuce (Lactuca sativa) to a combination of untargeted metabolomics (LC-QTof-MS) and in vitro bioactivity assays. Specifically, we examined the differences between untransformed cultured lettuce (UnT), lettuce transformed with either rolABC (RA) or rolC (RC) and commercially grown (COM) lettuce. Of the 5333 metabolite features aligned, deconvoluted and quantified 3637, 1792 and 3737 significantly differed in RA, RC and COM, respectively, compared with UnT. In all cases the number of downregulated metabolites exceeded the number increased. In vitro bioactivity assays showed that RA and RC (but not COM) significantly improved the ability of L. sativa to inhibit α-glucosidase, inhibit dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) and stimulate GLP-1 secretion. We putatively identified 76 lettuce metabolites (sesquiterpene lactones, non-phenolic and phenolic compounds) some of which were altered by several thousand percent in RA and RC. Ferulic acid levels increased 3033–9777%, aminooxononanoic acid increased 1141–1803% and 2,3,5,4′tetrahydroxystilbene-2-O-β-d-glucoside increased 40,272–48,008%. Compound activities were confirmed using commercially obtained standards. In conclusion, rol gene transformation significantly alters the metabolome of L.sativa and enhances its antidiabetic properties. There is considerable potential to exploit rol genes to modulate secondary metabolite production for the development of novel functional foods. This investigation serves as a new paradigm whereby genetic manipulation, metabolomic analysis and bioactivity techniques can be combined to enable the discovery of novel natural bioactives and determine the functional significance of plant metabolites.


2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Ożarowski ◽  
Radosław Kujawski ◽  
Przemysław Ł. Mikołajczak ◽  
Karolina Wielgus ◽  
Andrzej Klejewski ◽  
...  

Summary Flavonoids and their conjugates are the most important group of natural chemical compounds in drug discovery and development. The search for pharmacological activity and new mechanisms of activity of these chemical compounds, which may inhibit mediators of inflammation and influence the structure and function of endothelial cells, can be an interesting pharmacological strategy for the prevention and adjunctive treatments of hypertension, especially induced by pregnancy. Because cardiovascular diseases have multi-factorial pathogenesis these natural chemical compounds with wide spectrum of biological activities are the most interesting source of new drugs. Extracts from one of the most popular plant used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi could be a very interesting source of flavonoids because of its exact content in quercetin, apigenin, chrysin and scutellarin as well as in baicalin. These flavonoids exert vasoprotective properties and many activities such as: anti-oxidative via several pathways, anti-in-flammatory, anti-ischaemic, cardioprotective and anti-hypertensive. However, there is lack of summaries of results of studies in context of potential and future application of flavonoids with determined composition and activity. Our review aims to provide a literature survey of in vitro, in vivo and ex vivo pharmacological studies of selected flavonoids (apigenin, chrysin and scutellarin, baicalin) in various models of hypertension carried out in 2008–2018.


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