scholarly journals Phytosterols: Potential Metabolic Modulators in Neurodegenerative Diseases

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (22) ◽  
pp. 12255
Author(s):  
Niti Sharma ◽  
Mario A. Tan ◽  
Seong Soo A. An

Phytosterols constitute a class of natural products that are an important component of diet and have vast applications in foods, cosmetics, and herbal medicines. With many and diverse isolated structures in nature, they exhibit a broad range of biological and pharmacological activities. Among over 200 types of phytosterols, stigmasterol and β-sitosterol were ubiquitous in many plant species, exhibiting important aspects of activities related to neurodegenerative diseases. Hence, this mini-review presented an overview of the reported studies on selected phytosterols related to neurodegenerative diseases. It covered the major phytosterols based on biosynthetic considerations, including other phytosterols with significant in vitro and in vivo biological activities.

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 772-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Ataur Rahman ◽  
Md Rezanur Rahman ◽  
Toyfiquz Zaman ◽  
Md. Sahab Uddin ◽  
Rokibul Islam ◽  
...  

Background: Naturally-occurring products derived from living organisms have been shown to modulate various pharmacological and biological activities. Natural products protect against various diseases, which could be used for therapeutic assistance. Autophagy, a lysosome-mediated self-digestion pathway, has been implicated in a range of pathophysiological conditions and has recently gained attention for its role in several neurodegenerative diseases. Methods: In this current review, we emphasized the recent progress made in our understanding of the molecular mechanism of autophagy in different cellular and mouse models using naturally-occurring autophagy modulators for the management of several neurodegenerative diseases. Results: Accumulating evidence has revealed that a wide variety of natural compounds such as alkaloids, polyphenols, terpenoids, xanthonoids, flavonoids, lignans, disaccharides, glycolipoproteins, and saponins are involved in the modulation of the autophagy signaling pathway. These natural products have been used to treat various neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinocerebellar ataxia, neuroblastoma, and glioblastoma. Although a number of synthetic autophagy regulators have been recognized as encouraging neurodegenerative therapeutic candidates, natural autophagy- regulating compounds have been of further interest as potential disease therapeutics, as they cause insignificant side effects. Conclusion: Existing in vitro and in vivo data are promising and highlight that naturally-occurring autophagyregulating compounds play an important role in the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative disorders.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (35) ◽  
pp. 4362-4372
Author(s):  
John H. Miller ◽  
Viswanath Das

No effective therapeutics to treat neurodegenerative diseases exist, despite significant attempts to find drugs that can reduce or rescue the debilitating symptoms of tauopathies such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Pick’s disease. A number of in vitro and in vivo models exist for studying neurodegenerative diseases, including cell models employing induced-pluripotent stem cells, cerebral organoids, and animal models of disease. Recent research has focused on microtubulestabilizing agents, either natural products or synthetic compounds that can prevent the axonal destruction caused by tau protein pathologies. Although promising results have come from animal model studies using brainpenetrant natural product microtubule-stabilizing agents, such as paclitaxel analogs that can access the brain, epothilones B and D, and other synthetic compounds such as davunetide or the triazolopyrimidines, early clinical trials in humans have been disappointing. This review aims to summarize the research that has been carried out in this area and discuss the potential for the future development of an effective microtubule stabilizing drug to treat neurodegenerative disease.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaik Ibrahim Khalivulla ◽  
Arifullah Mohammed ◽  
Kokkanti Mallikarjuna

Background: Diabetes is a chronic disease affecting a large population worldwide and stands as one of the major global health challenges to be tackled. According to World Health Organization, about 400 million are having diabetes worldwide and it is the seventh leading cause of deaths in 2016. Plant based natural products had been in use from ancient time as ethnomedicine for the treatment of several diseases including diabetes. As a result of that, there are several reports on plant based natural products displaying antidiabetic activity. In the current review, such antidiabetic potential compounds reported from all plant sources along with their chemical structures are collected, presented and discussed. This kind of reports are essential to pool the available information to one source followed by statistical analysis and screening to check the efficacy of all known compounds in a comparative sense. This kind of analysis can give rise to few numbers of potential compounds from hundreds, whom can further be screened through in vitro and in vivo studies, and human trails leading to the drug development. Methods: Phytochemicals along with their potential antidiabetic property were classified according to their basic chemical skeleton. The chemical structures of all the compounds with antidiabetic activities were elucidated in the present review. In addition to this, the distribution and their other remarkable pharmacological activities of each species is also included. Results: The scrutiny of literature led to identification of 44 plants with antidiabetic compounds (70) and other pharmacological activities. For the sake of information, the distribution of each species in the world is given. Many plant derivatives may exert antidiabetic properties by improving or mimicking the insulin production or action. Different classes of compounds including sulfur compounds (1-4), alkaloids (5-11), phenolic compounds (12-17), tannins (18-23), phenylpropanoids (24-27), xanthanoids (28-31), amino acid (32), stilbenoid (33), benzofuran (34), coumarin (35), flavonoids (36-49) and terpenoids (50-70) were found to be active potential compounds for antidiabetic activity. Of the 70 listed compounds, majorly 17 compounds are from triterpenoids, 13 flavonoids and 7 are from alkaloids. Among all the 44 plant species, maximum number (7) of compounds are reported from Lagerstroemia speciosa followed by Momordica charantia (6) and S. oblonga with 5 compounds. Conclusion: This is the first paper to summarize the established chemical structures of phytochemicals that have been successfully screened for antidiabetic potential and their mechanisms of inhibition. The reported compounds could be considered as potential lead molecules for the treatment of type-2 diabetes. Further, molecular and clinical trials are required to select and establish the therapeutic drug candidates.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hina Gul ◽  
Muhammad Awais ◽  
Salina Saddick ◽  
Falak Sher Khan ◽  
Muhammad Gulfraz ◽  
...  

Abstract Dodonaea viscosa L. Jacq. is an evergreen shrub and native to Asia, Africa and Australia. It has been used as traditional medicine in different countries. The foremost objective of the current study was to discover protective potential of D. Viscosa flowers Methanol (DVM) and Chloroform (DVC) extracts against CCL4 induced toxicity in mice. This study was intended to identify phytochemicals through HPLC, GCMS and FT-IR as well as in vitro antioxidant and in vitro antituberculosis activity. Our comprehensive findings indicate that Dodonaea viscosa is valuable and widespread herbal medicines through therapeutic potentials for curing various ailments. Dodonaea viscosa flowers are found to have protective effect against oxidative stress produced by CCL4 in liver, kidney and spleen. The level of hepatic enzymes (ALP, AST ALT and Direct bilirubin), hematological parameters (RBCs, WBCs and Platelets), total protein and liver antioxidant enzymes (SOD, GPx and CAT) were restored by the intake of DV extracts after decline in levels by CCL4. Histopathological results discovered the defensive effect of 300mg/kg of DVM extract against CCL4 induced damage, thus having improved protective effect as compared to DVC and control. As a result of analysis total flavonoids and total phenolics were also revealed. Phytochemical investigation by HPLC identified gallic acid, epicatechin, cumeric acid, flavonoids while Oleic acid (Octadecenoic acid) (C18H34O2), Stearic acid (C18H36O2), Ricinoleic acid (C18H34O3) and Cedrol (C15H26O) was estimated by GCMS. DVM extract exhibited resistance against in vitro Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains. This study proposed that protective effect of DV against oxidative damage induced in Liver, Kidney and Spleen can possibly be correlated to their antioxidant as well as free radical scavenging property.


Author(s):  
Zahra Hashemi ◽  
Mohammad Ali Ebrahimzadeh

Abstract: Inherited beta-thalassemia is a major disease caused by irregular production of hemoglobin through reducing beta-globin chains. It has been observed that increasing fetal hemoglobin (HbF) production improves symptoms in the patients. Therefore, an increase in the level of HbF has been an operative approach for treating patients with beta-thalassemia. This review represents compounds with biological activities and pharmacological properties that can promote the HBF level and therefore used in the β-thalassemia patients' therapy. Various natural products with different mechanisms of action can be helpful in this medication cure. Clinical trials were efficient in improving the signs of patients. Association of in vivo, and in vitro studies of HbF induction and γ-globin mRNA growth displays that in vitro experiments could be an indicator of the in vivo response. The current study shows that; (a) HbF inducers can be grouped in several classes based on their chemical structures and mechanism of actions; b) According to several clinical trials, well-known drugs such as hydroxyurea and decitabine are useful HbF inducers; (c) The cellular biosensor K562 carrying genes under the control of the human γ-globin and β-globin gene promoters were applied during the researches; d) New natural products and lead compounds were found based on various studies as HbF inducers.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernanda Paula R. Santana ◽  
Nathalia M. Pinheiro ◽  
Márcia Isabel B. Mernak ◽  
Renato F. Righetti ◽  
Mílton A. Martins ◽  
...  

Pulmonary inflammation is a hallmark of many respiratory diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and acute respiratory syndrome distress (ARDS). Most of these diseases are treated with anti-inflammatory therapy in order to prevent or to reduce the pulmonary inflammation. Herbal medicine-derived natural products have been used in folk medicine and scientific studies to evaluate the value of these compounds have grown in recent years. Many substances derived from plants have the biological effectsin vitroandin vivo, such as flavonoids, alkaloids, and terpenoids. Among the biological activities of natural products derived from plants can be pointed out the anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antiplatelet, antitumor anti-allergic activities, and antioxidant. Although many reports have evaluated the effects of these compounds in experimental models, studies evaluating clinical trials are scarce in the literature. This review aims to emphasize the effects of these different natural products in pulmonary diseases in experimental models and in humans and pointing out some possible mechanisms of action.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 4760-4766
Author(s):  
Hartati R ◽  
Suarantika F ◽  
Fidrianny I

Ananas comosus L. Merr, known as pineapple, belongs to the Bromeliaceae family. This plant has been used as traditional medicine and continues until now in conventional herbal medicine. The pineapple was distributed in some countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and originated from South America. This article delved the scientific work about Ananas comosus focussing their usage as traditional medicine, chemical compounds and biological activities. All of the pieces of information were obtained from the scientific literature such as Science Direct, Google Scholar, Scopus and PubMed. Based on the literature survey,different parts of pineapple (Ananas comosus) are used in traditional medicine, used asan anti-inflammatory agent,anti-oedema, digestive disorder, antimicrobial, vermicide, and purgative. Phytochemical compounds from A. comosus have been provided, including ascorbic acid, quercetin, flavones-3-ol, flavones, and ferulic acid. The crude extracts of A. comosus have many pharmacological activities such as anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antibacterial. This discovery becomes possible due to scientific isolation and in vivo or in vitro analysis of A.comosus.


2022 ◽  
Vol 2022 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Zhe Li ◽  
Tingting Zhao ◽  
Jiaxin Li ◽  
Qingying Yu ◽  
Yu Feng ◽  
...  

Natural products have antitumor, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and other pharmacological activities and are an important source of drugs for prevention and treatment of various diseases. However, the inherent defects of natural products in physiological media such as poor solubility and stability and short biological half-life limit their clinical application. In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to the science of drug delivery by nanoscale materials. A large number of in vitro and in vivo studies have further confirmed the efficacy and safety of nanomedicine based on natural products in preclinical models of various diseases. In this review, we summarized the achievements of nanomaterials in improving the efficacy of natural products, introduced the research progress in several key fields of natural product-based nanomedicine in medical application, and discussed the challenges and prospects of clinical transformation of nanomedicine.


Author(s):  
JAYKUMAR MANE ◽  
DHEERAJ NAGORE ◽  
SOHAN CHITLANGE

The aim of this systematic review is to provide an in-depth study of ethnological uses, phyto-chemistry, pharmacological activities, and toxicological research in Uraria picta (Jacq.), to identify remaining gaps, and to provide a basis for future research. By searching for the words “U. picta” and “Prishnaparni” in electronic databases such as SciFinder, Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar, information on common uses, phytochemistry, and pharmacological activities was systematically collected. Phytochemical analysis of U. picta shows various components such as alkaloids, flavonoids, steroids, terpenoids, phenols, and saponins. The extracts and their isolated components showed numerous in vitro and in vivo pharmacological effects, including urinary tract diseases, tumors, edema, smoking, and dyspnea. On the other hand, searches of patent databases found almost seven applications, highlighting the differences between a large number of published scientific articles and non-existent patent applications. This event demonstrates the technological potential of undiscovered species. Ethnographic research shows that U. picta, an important Asian medicinal plant, is used to treat many diseases. In this review, the ethnobotanical, phytochemical, pharmacological, and ethnological properties of various morphological parts of the U. picta plant are highlighted. Future research has provided information for commercial research and has shown that this herb has tremendous potential for pharmaceutical and nutritional applications.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 902-907

Disease can occur due to alterations in many physiological processes. A variety of factorsare known to be involved in the progression of cancer, a chronic diseasethat occurs due to permissible proliferative signaling, avoiding growth suppressors, resisting cell death, allowing replicative immortality, induction of angiogenesis, and inducing invasion and metastasis, along with reprogramming of metabolic pathways involved in energy production and avoiding the host immune response for cell destruction. Treatment of such a multifactorial disease has very less cure rate because of the singular agents tried in the past for targeting. Molecular level studies with deeper insight are urgently neededthat focus on the most promising herbal-derived bioactive substances for which thorough research was carried out in the literature in various data-bases such as PUB-MED, MEDLINE, SCOPUS indexed journals etc. to look for systematic reviews of the protocols or data interpretation, natural drug/immunological properties and validation. As immune system plays avery important role in the proliferation or suppression of cancer and other autoimmune diseases, It is the dire need to study the effect of such natural compound on the immune system so that a possible drug target or epitope can be identified for the treatment of such diseases. In nutshell there are many nonclinical in vitro and in vivo studies on herbal medicines which commonly supports the traditional therapeutic claims. It has been seen from the previos studies in literature that the yield and composition of bioactive compounds derived from plants are dependent upon the production source,culturing conditions and extraction protocols.Therefore appropriate optimization conditions would certainly assist the medical and scientific fraternity to accept herbal products as potential candidates for cancer treatment. In this article we explored the different natural products, their immunological effects concerning cancer with no or negligible side effects. However,one has to look for potential herb–drug or herb-epitope interactions and how immune system responds to such drugs.


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