Latest ArticlesNanocrystals is a hot topic of poorly soluble drug delivery system under development. Nanocrystals is different from the nanoparticles for drug unloading in polymer materials, and nanocrystals is different from solid dispersion system, in which the drug maintains crystals state. Nanocrystals has a simple preparation process, represents an effective technology in the improvement of solubility and bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs, and has a very promising industrialization application and development potential. In this paper, we retrospect the development history of drug nanocrystals technology, review development of the preparation methods of nanocrystals, and analyze the existing problems to provide a reference to the development of drug nanocrystals preparation.
Anthocyanin is a water-soluble flavonoid pigment which is widely found in plants. Studies showed that anthocyanin had protective effect on vision. However, whether anthocyanin has therapeutic effect on cataract remain unclear. In this study, we established the age-related and posterior capsule opacification cataract cell models through inducing oxidative damage of human lens epithelial cells (HLECs) by H2O2 and inducing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by transforming growth factor β2 (TGF-β2). The preventative effects of anthocyanin on markers of oxidative damage and EMT were determined by respective assay kits and PCR analysis. Anthocyanin was beneficial to reduce oxidative stress of HLECs, protecting cells from H2O2 induced damage and increasing α-crystallin expression. The potential mechanisms might be that anthocyanin increased the activities of SOD and GSH-Px, which contributes to reduce cellular ROS and MDA level. Besides, anthocyanin inhibited Ca2+ overload, which contributes to protection of cell from apoptosis. Meanwhile, anthocyanin had inhibitory effect on EMT, slowed down cell proliferation, migration caused by TGF-β2 through decreasing mRNA expression levels of EMT markers including COL1A1, COL1A2, COL3, COL4, Fn and α-SMA. The results suggest that anthocyanin could protect HLECs from oxidative damage induced by H2O2 and cell proliferation, migration and EMT induced by TGF-β2, which indicated that anthocyanin may have protective and therapeutic effects on age-related cataract and posterior capsule opacification.
The impact of Rg1 in the disease progress and pathology of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) was investigated in mouse model (SOD1 G93A). Body weight and survival rate were monitored to check the course of disease. Rotarod test was used to evaluate the coordination of muscle movement. Toluidine blue staining and immunofluorescence were used to check the effect of Rg1 on motor neuron and microglia. The expression of oxidative stress related protein Nrf2 and the miRNA were tested to investigate the mechanism of Rg1. We found that 20 mg·kg-1·d-1 Rg1 significantly postponed the disease onset and process, improved the motor syndrome, reduced the loss of motor neuron and inhibited the activation of microglia cells. Rg1 inhibited the aggregation of miR-153 in the spinal cord of ALS mice, which relieved the inhibition of Nrf2 and contributed to its up-regulation in the activation of HO-1 anti-oxidative signal pathway. Our study confirmed that Rg1 could protect ALS mice from oxidative damage through the up-regulation of miR-153/Nrf2/HO-1, which provides a theoretical foundation for Rg1 application to the ALS treatment.
This study was designed to explore proteins differentially expressed in HER2 positive gastric cancer N87 cells and N87/R cells with an acquired resistance to herceptin based on label-free quantitative proteomics. The extracted proteins were reduced and alkylated, then digested using filter aided sample preparation (FASP); peptides were separated via small manual reversed phase column, analyzed by LC-MS/MS, and identified with protein database 2.1 search engine. Proteins were quantified by intensity based quantification (IBQ) to search for differential proteins by comparison with relatively quantified proteins. The enrichment and network construction in gene ontology (GO) terms, genes-disease and Wikipathway of differential proteins were established through Web Gestalt. A total of 8 509 proteins were detected, among them, 7 163 proteins were further analyzed by bioinformatics, of which 110 proteins were up-regulated and 70 were down-regulated in N87/R cells. The differential proteins showed a significant difference in cellular component, biological process and molecular function in GO terms, respectively. Genes-disease network analysis indicated the association of these differential proteins with neoplasm metastasis, neoplasm invasiveness and inflammation, etc. Wikipathway enrichment analysis revealed the relevance of several signaling pathways to herceptin resistance, which included IL-2, MAPK/ERK, mTOR, aurora A, Ret, NF-κB, immune-regulatory and metabolic pathway. Western blot showed a significant increase of ERK1/2 activities in N87/R cells compared with N87 cells. Correspondingly, SCH772984, a MAPK/ERK inhibitor, preferentially reduced the viability of N87/R cells. Taken together, our data suggested that the MAPK/ERK signaling pathway is one of the key pathways that mediate herceptin resistance. This study provides the basic information for exploring the mechanisms of acquired resistance to herceptin in gastric cancer cells.
Study on the integrated pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) model of rhubarb in rats with yang-deficiency constipation based on the principle of traditional Chinese medicine system. The rat model of yang-deficiency constipation was established using vinegar and ice water containing activated carbon. The blood samples with 0.5 mL were collected from orbital venous plexus at 0, 5, 10, 15, 30, 60, 120, 240, 480, 720, 1 440 min time points after oral administration of rhubarb decoction, and the dosage is equivalent to crude drug 2.5 g·kg-1. The concentration of aloe-emodin, rhein, emodin and chrysophanol in rat plasma were determined by HPLC, and ELISA method was used to detect the activities of motilin (MTL), gastrin (GT), endothelin (ET) and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) at different time points in serum. SPSS 21.0 software was used for analysis of component correlation and principal component, and WinNonlin 6.30 software was used to fit PK/PD model. Compared with the pharmacokinetic parameters of normal rats, in addition to emodin in the model rats showed characteristics of good absorption and slow to elimination; the content of MTL in model rats was significantly lower than that in normal rats. The composite values of the concentration and effect obtained by principal component analysis were connected by Sigmoid-Emax model. We established the integrated PK/PD model of rhubarb in treating yang-deficiency constipation to provide a new research direction for the material basis and mechanism of rhubarb treatment of yang deficiency constipation.
This study was designed to construct a "drug-core target-pathway" network of Erzhi Pill for hepatic injury treatment in an effort to explore the "multi-components, multi-targets, multi-pathways" mechanism. ADME/T calculation method was used to screen the active components of Erzhi Pill, and then predict the potential targets according to the reverse pharmacophore matching method. Biological information annotation databases (DAVID) was used to analyze the molecular function and biological process of the action targets. The Cytoscape software was used to construct the "ingredient-core target-pathway" network of Erzhi Pill for hepatic injury treatment. It was found that 39 major active ingredients of Erzhi Pill regulated 321 targets (HRAS, DCK, HSD17B1, UCK2, et al) and affected 51 pathways, such as insulin signaling pathway, FoxO signaling pathway, metabolic pathways and glycolysis/gluconeogenesis. The method revealed the action features of traditional Chinese medicine as multi-ingredients, multi-targets, multi-pathways, providing new clues for further basic study on the hepatic injury pharmacological mechanism of Erzhi Pill.
In this study, we used a mathematic-based modeling system to screen the cytokines that are sensitive to Zhuangguguanjie wan (ZGW)-induced idiosyncratic liver injury. The values of 27 cytokines were used as the data source in rat liver of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) + ZGW group. The alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activity value of liver function indexes was used as the outcome evaluation index of liver injury. Cytokines of ZGW-induced idiosyncratic liver injury were screened using Logistic regression, random forest method, LASSO Logistics regression and method of combining rule discovery algorithm with LASSO, and cytokines filtered out were revalued in THP1 macrophage. Susceptible cytokine combinations:interleukin-1β (IL-1β), epidermal growth factor (EGF) and interleukin-18 (IL-18) closely related to ZGW-induced idiosyncratic liver injury were obtained after preliminary screening analysis. The result of revalued in THP1 showed that the ethanolic extract of ZGW (EtZ) combined with IL-1β or IL-18 synergistically enhanced tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) secretion in THP1 macrophage, and EtZ combined with IL-1β significantly enhanced interleukin-6 (IL-6) secretion in THP1 macrophage, but EtZ combined with EGF markedly inhibited IL-6 secretion in THP1 macrophage. The results suggest that the sensitive cytokines that can be characterized in the ZGW-induced idiosyncratic liver injury are IL-1β and IL-18, which provides a basis for screening the ZGW-induced idiosyncratic liver injury patients, and a new experimental evidence for clinical safety medication and risk prevention of ZGW.
Muscimol, cycloserin and ibotenic acid which are extracted from mushroom contain isoxazole pharmacophore structure. By using muscarinic structure as a model compound and molecular recombination method, we synthesized muscarinic analogues compounds 3-(1', 2'-di-O-isopropylidenedioxyethyl)-5-aryl-3a, 6a-dihydro-4, 6-dioxopyrrolino[3', 4'-d]isoxazoline derivatives through 1, 3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction. The structures of the target compounds were confirmed by UV-Vis, 1H NMR, IR and elemental analysis. The drug activities of obtained compounds were screened in vitro. The pharmacophore in the structure is a potential non-covalent DNA binding, the compounds have anticancer activity and the leukocyte common antigen activity in a different extent. The preliminary results of in vitro anticancer test suggest that the inhibitory rates of compounds 3a-3o to Cdc25A phosphatase in cell division cycle ranged from 56.99%-99.94%; at the test concentration of 20 μg·mL-1, 3f, 3h, 3i, 3m, 3o were no inhibition activity, and the rest of the compounds shows moderate to good excellent inhibition rate from 66.85% to 99.84%, even at the concentration as low as 5 μg·mL-1. At the test concentration of 20 μg·mL-1, except compound 3i, the rest compounds' inhibition activity of against leukocyte common antigen (LCA) CD45 protein tyrosine phosphatase A, are 63.08%-92.09%. These active compounds are potential inhibitors against Cdc25A and CD45 protein tyrosine phosphatase A, which have great application prospects in the treatment of cancers and Inflammatory and immune diseases.
Ten isoprenylated flavonoids were isolated from 95% ethanol extraction of Artocarpus heterophyllus, with a combination of various chromatographic approaches, including ODS, MCI, CHP-20 P, Sephadex LH-20 and high performance liquid chromatography. On the basis of physic-chemical characters and spectroscopic data analysis, these compounds were identified as artoheteroid E (1), cycloheterophyllin (2), artelastoxanthone (3), artoindonesianin Q (4), cudraflavone C (5), 8-(γ, γ-dimethylallyl)-5, 2', 4'-trihydroxy-7-methoxyflavone (6), kuwanon T (7), 6-(3-methylbut-2-enyl) apigenin (8), 5, 7, 2', 4'-tetrahydroxy-6-(3-methylbut-3-enyl) flavone (9), albanin A (10). Among them, compound 1 is a new one, while compounds 2-4 were isolated for the first time from the plant of Artocarpus heterophyllus. All isolated compounds were screened for their inhibitory abilities against cathepsin K. Of them, compounds 3-5, 7 and 10 showed inhibitory effects with the IC50 values of 0.9, 1.6, 4.5, 24.5 and 63.5 μmol·L-1, respectively.
This study was designed to establish a method to obtain the fingerprint chromatogram for the quantitative determination of Cordyceps sinensis in different sizes, a comparison of Cordyceps sinensis from five places was made to analyze its similarity and the content of main nucleosides (uridine, inoside, guanosine and adenosine). The assay was performed on a Waters XSelect HSS T3 C18 (4.6 mm×250 mm, 5 μm), with a mobile phase consisting of water (A)-acetonitrile (B) at the flow rate of 0.6 mL·min-1 (0-5 min, 0 B; 5-15 min, 0→10% B; 15-30 min, 10%→20% B; 30-33 min, 20%→50% B; 33-35 min, 50%→0 B; 35-40 min, 0 B). The detection wavelength was 260 nm and the column temperature was set at 30℃, and the injection volume was 5 μL. The results showed that there was no significant difference of the nucleosides in samples from the same place of the different sizes, but contents of the nucleosides variate a lot by production places. More data are required for further research. The method is proved for scientific and specific formulation of the standard in evaluation of circulated Cordyceps sinensis.
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