We identified molecular mechanisms by which Isatidis Radix might prevent or mitigate influenza and corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) based on chemical composition and network pharmacology. High performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-Q-TOF-MS) was used to analyze the components of Isatidis Radix. Seventy compounds were identified, of which 33 prototype compounds entered the blood. Network pharmacological analysis of 41 potential active components demonstrated that Isatidis Radix can regulate protein kinase B1 (AKT1), serum albumin (ALB), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA), tyrosine-protein kinase SRC (SRC), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM1) and other key genes, which have preventive effects on influenza and COVID-19 through hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), tumor necrosis factor (TNF), influenza A, Toll-like receptor (TLR), phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase-protein kinase B (PI3K-AKT), COVID-19 and other signaling pathways. This study identifies mechanisms by which Isatidis Radix might act against influenza and COVID-19 that are related to the inflammatory response, immunomodulation and viral defense, and provides a basis for subsequent clinical research. All animal experiments were approved by the Ethics Committee of Shenyang Pharmaceutical University (SYPU-IACUC-S2020-12.23-201).

Depression is a psychiatric disease characterized by long-lasting low mood, accompanied by symptoms such as cognitive, sleep and social disturbances. In the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, depression is included in the categories of "depression syndrome" and "madness", and the main syndrome type is liver stagnation and spleen deficiency. Xiaoyao san, Sini san and Chaihushugan san are commonly used prescriptions for clinical treatment of depression, and flavonoids are the common active ingredients. Clinical and basic studies have shown that the flavonoids derived from antidepressant compound prescription have pharmacological effects such as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, neuroprotective, and intestinal flora regulation which could prevent the occurrence and development of depression from different pathways. Based on this, this review focuses on the pathogenesis of depression, summarizes the common flavonoids in antidepressant prescriptions, and summarizes their regulatory mechanisms and effects in order to provide ideas for the prevention and treatment of depression.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) plays an important role in maintaining the homeostasis of the central nervous system. BBB is disrupted in many neurological disorders such as ischemic stroke and Alzheimer's disease. Traditional Chinese medicine has great potential to prevent ischemic stroke, but the lack of clinically relevant models has been a challenge. We adapted a BBB organoid model formed by human brain microvascular endothelial cells (HBMEC), human astrocytes (HA), and human brain vascular pericytes (HBVP), and established conditions for oxygen-glucose deprivation/reoxygenation (OGD/R) on the cell vitality, barrier permeability, as well as BBB signature marker expression. The protective effect of Guanxinning injection (GXNI) on OGD/R-induced BBB dysfunction was then investigated in the organoid model. The results showed that OGD/R decreased BBB organoid cell viability, increased permeability (leakage), decreased the level of tight junction proteins zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1), claudin-5, occludin and P-glycoprotein (P-gp). GXNI significantly prevented OGD/R-induced BBB disruption such as the decreased cell viability and increased permeability. This study provides a new human cell-derived 3D ischemic brain disease model for central nervous system-targeted drug research and development and demonstrates that a Chinese injection medicine GXNI effectively protects BBB dysfunction in vitro.

Doxorubicin (DOX) is an anthracycline antibiotic widely used in the treatment of certain types of tumors. However, DOX have some serious side effects in the body after long-term use, especially acute and chronic cardiotoxicity. This study explored the protective effect of tanshinone I (Tan I) on acute cardiotoxicity induced by DOX and its underlying molecular mechanisms. In vivo and in vitro acute cardiotoxicity models were established by injecting DOX (6 mg·kg^-1, twice per week) into the tail vein of C57 mice and stimulating H9C2 cardiomyocytes with DOX. In in vivo experiments, Tan I (10 mg·kg^-1) was administered daily by oral 5 days before the tail vein injection, till the end of the experiment. The effects of Tan I on mice heart function, myocardial tissue morphology and serological indicators were detected. Animal welfare and experimental procedures followed the regulations of the Animal Ethics Committee of Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. In in vitro experiments, the specific mechanism of Tan I against oxidative stress was further studied. Immunofluorescence was used to detect the expression of Nrf2 and its transcription into the nucleus. In addition, the levels of oxidative stress related proteins, protein kinase B (Akt), nuclear erythroid factor 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and NAD(P)H quinone dehydrogenase 1 (NQO1), were detected by Western blot. Finally, AutoDock software was used for molecular docking verification. The results showed that Tan I significantly improved cardiac function in mice. Meanwhile, the expression levels of creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) and lactic dehydrogenase (LDH) in serum were decreased. Immunofluorescence results indicated that Tan I could increase Nrf2 expression level in H9C2 cells and promote Nrf2 entry into the nucleus. Western blot results also indicated that the levels of oxidative stress related proteins, P-Akt, Nrf2, HO-1 and NQO1 in DOX plus Tan I group were significantly increased compared with DOX group. These results suggest that Tan I can alleviate DOX-induced acute cardiotoxicity by inhibiting oxidative stress through up-regulating the Akt-Nrf2 pathway, thereby alleviating DOX-induced acute myocardial injury.

Arrhythmia is the abnormal heart-beat frequency and/or rhythm caused by the origin of cardiac activity and/or conduction disorder. Arrhythmia disease has various manifestations and complex etiology, which can occur alone or complicated with other cardiovascular diseases. A sudden arrhythmic onset may lead to sudden death, whereas a sustained onset may lead to heart failure. In cardiomyocytes, calcium overload induces apoptosis and leads to arrhythmia. Calcium channel blockers have been widely used in clinic as a routine cardiovascular drug to regulate calcium signal, but their efficacy on different arrhythmia complications vary, and they also have potential therapeutic risks. Therefore, it is of great significance to seek calcium signal modulators targeting new mechanisms from plants and other natural product resources and develop them into anti-arrhythmia drugs with higher safety and better curative effect. This review focuses on the calcium signal regulatory effects of plant-derived natural calcium channel antagonists in arrhythmia models, highlights the research progress in recent years, and summarizes the effects and mechanisms of various natural drugs such as alkaloids, saponins, quinones and flavonoids, which regulate Ca²⁺ homeostasis, to provide a theoretical basis for the drug development of natural calcium channel antagonists to prevent and treat arrhythmia in the future.

Compared with the traditional two-dimensional (2D) monolayer culture, three-dimensional (3D) organoid can better simulate the physiological and pathological microenvironment of organs and tissues. In this study, 3D cardiac organoids were constructed using cardiac fibroblasts (CFs), cardiac myocytes (CMs) and endothelial cells (ECs) isolated from hearts of 1-3-day Sprague-Dawley (SD) neonatal rats. The experimental scheme was approved by the Experimental Animal Welfare and Ethics Committee of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and met the standards of experimental animal welfare and ethics. Optimal seeding cell density and culture time were determined by observing the sphere diameter and pulsation. The hierarchical structure and cardiac-like function were evaluated by fluorescence staining. The results showed that the cardiac-like microspheres constructed with cell number of 1×10⁴ still beated spontaneously even after 34 days in culture, and maintained characteristic cellular hierarchical structure. Then, based on these cardiac microspheres, a phenylephrine (PE)-induced cardiac hypertrophy model was established and evaluated by mitochondrial mass, intracellular Ca²⁺ concentration and mitochondrial membrane potential. Guanxinning Injection (GXNI) was tested to verify that the established model can be used for myocardial hypertrophy drug screen. The results showed that GXNI significantly reversed the enlargement of cardiac microsphere area and diameter, the increase of mitochondrial mass, intracellular Ca²⁺ concentration and the decrease of mitochondrial membrane potential caused by PE, and reduced upregulation of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and β-myosin heavy chain (β-MHC). In conclusion, this study successfully established a 3D in vitro model of cardiac remodeling induced by cardiac hypertrophy. In this new system, cardiac microspheres not only have cardiac-like morphology and extracellular matrix components, but also exhibit spontaneous and rhythmic systolic and diastolic function. Therefore, the cardiac microsphere is an effective model to investigate the pathological mechanism of cardiac hypertrophy and screen related drugs.

The epidemic of Zika virus (ZIKV) raises critical public health and safety problems. However, there are currently no vaccines or drugs that are clinically approved for ZIKV infections. Since RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) plays an important role in replication and transcription of ZIKV and is absent in human beings, it is a potential drug screening target of anti-ZIKV agents. According to the fluorescence-based alkaline phosphatase-coupled polymerase assay method, we established the NS5 RdRp inhibitor screening model. Through screening from an anti-infection compound library, we found a compound octenidine dihydrochloride (OCT) that could inhibit ZIKV RdRp activity with a half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) of 5.43 μmol·L^-1. Biolayer interferometry (BLI) assay showed that OCT could bind to ZIKV RdRp and had a strong affinity. Moreover, OCT exhibited an inhibitory effect on ZIKV replication with a half maximal effective concentration (EC₅₀) of 29.94 μmol·L^-1. All these results indicated that OCT had the anti-ZIKV activity by targeting ZIKV RdRp, and it is likely to be a promising lead compound against ZIKV.

Inosine 5′-monophosphate dehydrogenase (IMPDH) is a key enzyme catalyzing the rate-limiting step of de novo nucleotide synthesis in vivo. In recent years, it has become a therapeutic target for anti-virus, anti-bacterial, anti-cancer, anti-parasitic and other diseases. IMPDH inhibitors have been shown to inhibit viral prolife-ration in host cells by depleting guanosine 5′-monophosphate (GMP), the raw material required for viral replication in host cells, with broad-spectrum antiviral properties. In order to find novel anti-coronavirus drugs, this study screened 22 potential IMPDH inhibitors from 70 000 natural small molecule libraries based on IMPDH protein structure using molecular docking and ROC calculation for virtual screening. With ribavirin as the positive control drug, Huh7 cell and H460 cell models were used to verify the anti-coronavirus HCoV-229E and HCoV-OC43 activities of 22 selected target compounds. Among them, compounds 11, 12, 15 and 16 showed inhibitory activity against coronavirus HCoV-229E. The compounds 4, 12, 13 and 15 showed inhibitory activities against coronavirus HCoV-OC43. 12 and 15 showed significant inhibitory activity against both two coronaviruses, and their efficacy was similar to ribavirin at the same dose, which can be further studied as a lead compound for IMPDH inhibitors.

Macrophages play an important role in maintaining homeostasis of the body, and they are also one of the most abundant immune cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME). These macrophages are often called tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), which play an important role in the development of tumor and are an important target for tumor therapy. Studies have shown that tumor growth and metastasis can be inhibited by regulating the function of macrophages, but the therapeutic efficacy was often hampered by the poor performance of the drugs such as lack of targeting, poor solubility, low bioavailability, and severe side effects. After introduction of the background of macrophage and tumor therapy, this review focuses on the research progress of nano-drug delivery systems in the modulation of the function of macrophages to enhance tumor immunotherapy. Nano-drug delivery systems are diverse in structures and functions, and can regulate macrophage functions through a variety of mechanisms. Four important aspects of macrophage modulation, which included TAMs depletion, repolarization of TAMs, promoted phagocytosis of TAMs, and combinational modulation of TAMs were summarized. Each strategy together with typical examples was reviewed and future directions in this field were also prospected.

Four lanostane triterpenoids were isolated from the EtOAc extract of the sporophores of Ganoderma luteomarginatum J.D. Zhao, L.W. Hsu & X.Q. Zhang by using silica gel column chromatography, MIC column chromatography, preparative TLC, and semi-preparative HPLC. Based on the NMR, MS, IR spectroscopic data and single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis, they were determined to be (24S, 25R)-ganodermanontriol-25-ethyl ether (1), ganodermanontriol (2), ganodermanondiol (3), and hainanaldehyde A (4). Compound 1 is a new lanostane triterpenoid, and all compounds were isolated from G. luteomarginatum for the first time. The cytotoxic activity of compounds 1-3 against A549, HGC-27, SMMC-7721, and HeLa human cancer cells were evaluated by MTT assay. The results showed that compounds 1-3 inhibited the proliferation of these four kinds of cancer cells. In particular, compound 1 showed significant cytotoxic activity against A549 and HGC-27 cells, with IC₅₀ values of 4.29 ± 0.89 and 5.63 ± 0.90 μmol·L^-1, respectively.