Latest ArticlesSerotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) is an endogenous molecule playing key roles in life activity. In the treatment of metabolic diseases such as obesity, the traditional paradigm of appetite suppression by serotonin in the central nervous system has some limitations. In recent years, great progress has been made in the study of the regulation of energy metabolism by peripheral serotonin system. Recent studies revealed that peripheral serotonin plays an important role in regulation of adipogenesis and energy expenditure in adipose tissues, insulin secretion in pancreatic β-cell and glycogen synthesis in liver, etc. This review summarizes the recent advances in the function of serotonin in the peripheral organs of energy metabolism. We propose that peripheral serotonin system may serve as an attractive new therapeutic target for the treatment of metabolic diseases in the near future.
With the development of polymeric materials and nanotechnology, the potential application of nanoscaled drug delivery system (NDDS) is gradually manifested in the field of pharmaceutics. Especially, NDDS has the obvious advantages in the delivery of gene or drug. Comparing to the delivery system of single-drug, co-delivery system of gene and drug can significantly improve the therapeutic effects by enhancing transfection efficiency of gene and reversing multidrug resistance, etc. The co-delivery systems of gene and drug, which had the triggered release characteristics in the inner and outer of tumor, could be constructed by introducing the environment-responsive (pH-responsive, redox-responsive and light-responsive, etc) groups into the co-delivery system. The antitumor activity was further improved. In the present paper, the environment-responsive delivery systems in the application of co-delivery gene and drug in recent years were reviewed, and their remarkable properties in the antitumor activity were analyzed and summarized.
Complement activation-related pseudo-allergic reactions (CARPA) may represent 77% of all immune-mediated immediate hypersensitivity reactions. Because of the universality of the CARPA response and correlation between it and drug properties, complement activity tests are recommended as one of the tests for immunotoxicity and bioequivalence of drugs. However, in-vivo tests of complement activation are complicated, and the immunological differences between different individuals and between human and animal, making it very necessary to establish a standard and sample evaluation model for testing the effects of drugs on complement activity. In this study, the standard reaction serum was prepared by pooling sera collected from 40 healthy blood donors; a standard positive control was prepared by incubation with a heat-agglutinated IgG and zymosan A; SC5b-9, C5a, C4d and Bb were chosen as the test targets and evaluation criteria of the results was defined, all of these constituted the in-vitro model. By using this in-vitro model, the immunological toxicity of the different prescription of antifungal drug amphotericin B, and voriconazole for injection, and the bioequivalence of amphotericin B liposome formulations were studied.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder, with several risk factors contributing to the onset, such as aging, genetics, oxidative stress and neuroinflammation. There are several PD animals that mimics different risk factor. α-Synuclein mutation mice and systemic lipopolysaccharide (LPS) injection mice are two kinds of most common animal models that replicate genetic mutation and neuroinflammation, respectively. However, in these two animal models, the pathogenesis occurred after a long period of stimulation. In the present study, four-month-old α-synucleintransgenic mice (A53T) were intraperitoneally injected with LPS once a week for continuous 8 weeks to simulate the inflammatory response. The behavioral results showed that the time of mice staying on the rod and the performance score were markedly decreased, indicating motor dysfunction. Dopaminergic neuronal function also decreased. It was noted that the movement dysfunction and pathological changes were aggravated in LPS plus α-synuclein challenged mice compared with LPS or α-synuclein stimulated alone, suggesting that the double attack had synergistic effects. Mechanistic study demonstrated that LPS and α-synuclein combined challenge led to obvious neuroinflammatory response and apoptosis, which might contribute to motor and dopaminergic neuronal dysfunction. In addition, differential proteomic study showed that the expression of CD99L2 and COX7RP significantly increased in the midbrain of LPS plus α-synuclein challenged mice, which were closely related to inflammation and apoptosis, and might be involved in the pathogenesis of PD. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that LPS could potentiate dopaminergic neuronal function in α-synuclein transgenic mice, which might be an ideal method to develop PD animal model.
The aim of the present study was to explore a sensitive, stable and reliable method for evaluating the phagocytosis, in which RAW264.7 macrophages engulfed GFP-Escherichia coli was tested by high-content screening technology. The study was conducted to optimize the method in evaluation of traditional Chinese medicine in the promotion of macrophage function. By testing macrophages at different ratio of bacteria to cells (multiplicity of infection, MOI), and at different incubation time, we optimized a high content screening method and the experimental parameters to determine the impact of bacteria in macrophages (fluorescence intensity index = be swallowed bacteria/macrophages). The method was used to determine whether Dendrobium moniliforme (DM) have effects on macrophage phagocytosis. The results show that the index has a positive relationship with MOI values, and the highest index was observed at incubation time of 1.5 h. The optimized conditions was 1×104 cells/well with a MOI of 50:1 (bacteria:cells) with incubation of 1.5 h. Under this condition, the relative standard deviation (RSD) was less than 10% in the precision test. Using the method to detect DM regulating macrophage phagocytosis experiment results showed that in 0.31-2.50 g·L-1 concentration range, DM has a dose-response effect in promoting phagocytosis. We successfully established the method for evaluation of macrophage phagocytosis, and proved the activity of DM in promotion of macrophage phagocytosis.
Compound Yizhihao, consists of Radix isatidis, Folium isatidis, Artemisia rupestris, has a significant therapeutic effect on the treatment of influenza and fever. However, the mechanism of its action is still unclear. In this investigation, we collected the key target molecule of influenza disease and the chemical constituents of Compound Yizhihao, and developed Naïve Bayesian classification models based on the input molecular fingerprints and molecule descriptors. The built models were further applied to construct classifiers for predicting the effective constituents. We used the professional network-building software to build the constituent-target network and target-pathway network, which revealed the network pharmacology of the effective constituents in Compound Yizhihao. It will contribute to the further research of mechanism of Compound Yizhihao.
Rhizoma Dioscoreae Bulbiferae is a traditional Chinese medicine with hepatotoxicity, but the metabolic profile of fatty acids has not been identified in the rats with liver injury. In this project, a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method was applied to simultaneous quantification of 16 non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) and esterified fatty acids (EFA) in the serum of control, ethanol extraction of Rhizoma Dioscoreae Bulbiferae (ethanol extraction, ET) and diosbulbin B (DB)-treated rats. Meanwhile, the change of fatty acid metabolic profile of liver injured rats was analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). The results of NEFA concentration indicated that the serum concen-trations of palmitic acid (C16:0), stearic acid (C18:0), palmitoleic acid (C16:1n7), oleic acid (C18:1n9), vaccenic acid (C18:1n7), linoleic acid (C18:2n6), linolenic acid (C18:3n3), eicosatrienoic acid (C20:3n6), arachidonic acid (C20:4n6) and docosahexaenoic acid (C22:6n3) in DB-treated rats decreased significantly, while that of C18:2n6 and C20:3n6 obviously increased and that of C20:4n6 and C22:6n3 noticeably dropped in ET-treated rats when compared with control. Furthermore, the results of EFA concentration illus-trated that the serum concentrations of C16:0, C18:0, C20:4n6, C22:6n3 and eicosapentaenoic acid (C20:5n3) in two toxic groups were remarkably decreased when compared with control. The fatty acid meta-bolic profiles of the two toxic groups exhibited significant difference from the normal levels, and the degree of deviation of ET group was higher than that of DB group. More importantly, the results of PLS-DA showed that C20:4n6 and C22:6n3 were important indicators of the hepatotoxicity induced by ET and DB, and the serum concentrations of the two fatty acids had good correlation with the levels of alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and total bilirubin using Pearson's correlation analysis and canonical correlation analysis (CCA). Therefore, C20:4n6 and C22:6n3 were identified as potential biomarkers of ET and DB-induced liver injury. The project can provide a foundation for furture investigation of molecular mechanism of hepato-toxicity caused by Rhizoma Dioscoreae Bulbiferae.
The paper was aimed to investigate the association of VDR polymorphisms with tacrolimus (FK506) concentration in Chinese renal transplant recipients. A total of 114 renal transplant recipients receiving tacrolimus were genotyped for VDR rs1540339 and rs2853559 by Agena Bioscience MassARRAY® system and CYP3A5*3 by PCR-RFLP method. Trough concentrations of tacrolimus on day 7 after renal transplantation were collected from clinical data. Statistical analysis was performed with Spearman's correlation, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis H test. The dose-adjusted concentration of tacrolimus in VDR rs2853559 GA and GG carriers were considerably higher than that of AA carriers. After stratification by CYP3A5*3 genotypes, VDR rs2853559 GA and GG carriers had a higher dose-adjusted tacrolimus concentration than that in AA carriers in CYP3A5 nonexpresser. CYP3A5*3 and VDR rs2853559 explained 45.6% variability of tacrolimus C0/D. In CYP3A5 non-expressers, VDR rs2853559 explained 14.4% variability of tacrolimus C0/D. The results illustrated that VDR rs2853559 polymorphisms was associated with tacrolimus concentrations, and the determination of this SNP may be useful for individualized medicine of tacrolimus.
Thirty-three compounds were designed and synthesized directly from three-component, one-pot condensation of 1-(4-methylphenyl) ethanone and aromatic amines with some aromatic aldehydes. The chemical structures of the Mannich bases were confirmed by 1H NMR, IR and MS. The screening results of bioactivity indicated that all of these title compounds possessed the inhibitory activity at the concentration of 1×10-4 mol·L-1. Among them, the compound TM33 displayed the strongest bioactivity with the inhibition percentage of 60.3% against P338 cancer cell line at the concentration of 1×10-8 mol·L-1, and the value of the half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) was as low as 0.45 nmol·L-1. This study suggests a new type of potential anti-leukemia molecules.
A series of novel benzimidazole and benzothiazole derivatives were designed and synthesized as inhibitors of SIRT1-SIRT3. The target compounds were synthesized from potassium O-ethyldithiocarbonate through a three-step route. The structures of the obtained compounds were elucidated by 1H NMR and HR-MS. Of all compounds, six showed potent SIRT2-inhibitory activities with IC50 values ranging from 2.8 to 21.2 μmol·L-1. Among them, compound 10c displayed the most potent SIRT2-inhibitory activities (IC50 = 2.8 μmol·L-1), with more than 35-fold selectivity over SIRT1 and SIRT3 (IC50 > 100 μmol·L-1).
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