scholarly journals Leonurine, a Potential Agent of Traditional Chinese Medicine: Recent Updates and Future Perspectives

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 1934578X1601101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Yang ◽  
Wanwan Jia ◽  
Yi Zhun Zhu

Herba Leonuri, also named Chinese Motherwort, has been extensively investigated as an effective agent on the uterus system. Our group has been studying the natural products of Herba Leonuri for several years, and during this period, many biological activities of the drug were recognized. Leonurine (4-guanidino- N-butyl-syringate) is an alkaloid present in Herba Leonuri. Recently, growing evidence has highlighted the therapeutic potential of leonurine in multiple diseases, especially cardiovascular. In this review, we discuss the biological activities of leonurine, as well as recent advances involving this alkaloid.

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 1904 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shan ◽  
Zheng ◽  
Li

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved ‘self-eating’ process that maintains cellular, tissue, and organismal homeostasis. New studies on autophagy, mediated by subsets of autophagy proteins, are emerging in many physiological and pathological processes. Astragalus membranaceus (AM), also named Huangqi, is one of the fundamental herbs in traditional Chinese medicine and its extracts have been proved to possess many biological activities related to autophagy, including anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, anticancer, anti-photoaging, and improvement of cardiomyocyte function. Evidence suggests that AM extracts can have therapeutic potential in autophagy dysregulation-associated diseases because of their biological positive effects. Here we will review the literature concerning the effects of AM extracts on autophagy dysregulation-associated diseases.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 559-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Yuan ◽  
Xiaocui Zhou ◽  
Yuanyuan Wang ◽  
Yan Wang ◽  
Xiangyan Teng ◽  
...  

Honokiol and its isomer magnolol are poly-phenolic compounds isolated from the Magnolia officinalis that exert cardiovascular modulating effects via a variety of mechanisms. They are used as blood-quickening and stasis-dispelling agents in Traditional Chinese Medicine and confirmed to have therapeutic potential in atherosclerosis, thrombosis, hypertension, and cardiac hypertrophy. This comprehensive review summarizes the current data regarding the cardioprotective mechanisms of those compounds and identifies areas for further research.


Blood ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 111 (4) ◽  
pp. 2354-2363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Baumann ◽  
Stefanie C. Fas ◽  
Marco Giaisi ◽  
Wolfgang W. Müller ◽  
Anette Merling ◽  
...  

Herbs have successfully been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. However, their curative mechanisms remain largely unknown. In this study, we show that Wogonin, derived from the traditional Chinese medicine Huang-Qin (Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi), induces apoptosis in malignant T cells in vitro and suppresses growth of human T-cell leukemia xenografts in vivo. Importantly, Wogonin shows almost no toxicity on T lymphocytes from healthy donors. Wogonin induces prolonged activation of PLCγ1 via H2O2 signaling in malignant T cells, which leads to sustained elevation of cytosolic Ca2+ in malignant but not normal T cells. Subsequently, a Ca2+ overload leads to disruption of the mitochondrial membrane. The selective effect of Wogonin is due to its differential regulation of the redox status of malignant versus normal T cells. In addition, we show that the L-type voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels are involved in the intracellular Ca2+ mobilization in T cells. Furthermore, we show that malignant T cells possess elevated amounts of voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels compared with normal T cells, which further enhance the cytotoxicity of Wogonin for malignant T cells. Taken together, our data show a therapeutic potential of Wogonin for the treatment of hematologic malignancies.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Xi-jun Wang ◽  
Shi Qiu ◽  
Aihua Zhang ◽  
Jian-hua Miao ◽  
Hui Sun ◽  
...  

The incidence of neurological disorders is growing in the world together with an increased lifespan. Nowadays, there are still no effective treatments for neurodegenerative pathology, which make necessary to search for new therapeutic agents. Natural products, most of them used in phytochemicals from herbal medicine, are considered promising alternatives for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Numerous herbs have been applied to neurodegenerative disease treatments as complementary and alternative medicines. In the 21st century, omics-coupled functional pharmacology was developed for neurodegenerative drug discovery from natural products. In this article, we firstly provide the latest understanding of neurological disorders on risk factors, category, diagnosis and treatment, and then specially present an overview of natural products in neuroprotective effects research from chemical biology to pharmacological targets, and also discuss the natural products application and future challenge.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loleny Tavares ◽  
Slim SMAOUI ◽  
Cristian Pinilla ◽  
Hajer Ben Hlima ◽  
Helio Lopes Barros

Recently, studies on natural products have considerably increased due to their exceptional biological activities and health benefits. Subsequently, their pharmacological attributes have played an immense role in detecting natural and...


2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifei Zhong ◽  
Madhav C. Menon ◽  
Yueyi Deng ◽  
Yiping Chen ◽  
John Cijiang He

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mengzhu Xue ◽  
Shoude Zhang ◽  
Chaoqian Cai ◽  
Xiaojuan Yu ◽  
Lei Shan ◽  
...  

As the major issue to limit the use of drugs, drug safety leads to the attrition or failure in clinical trials of drugs. Therefore, it would be more efficient to minimize therapeutic risks if it could be predicted before large-scale clinical trials. Here, we integrated a network topology analysis with cheminformatics measurements on drug information from the DrugBank database to detect the discrepancies between approved drugs and withdrawn drugs and give drug safety indications. Thus, 47 approved drugs were unfolded with higher similarity measurements to withdrawn ones by the same target and confirmed to be already withdrawn or discontinued in certain countries or regions in subsequent investigations. Accordingly, with the 2D chemical fingerprint similarity calculation as a medium, the method was applied to predict pharmacovigilance for natural products from an in-house traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) database. Among them, Silibinin was highlighted for the high similarity to the withdrawn drug Plicamycin although it was regarded as a promising drug candidate with a lower toxicity in existing reports. In summary, the network approach integrated with cheminformatics could provide drug safety indications effectively, especially for compounds with unknown targets or mechanisms like natural products. It would be helpful for drug safety surveillance in all phases of drug development.


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