Optimal Formula of Angelica sinensis Ameliorates Memory Deficits in β-amyloid Protein-induced Alzheimer's Disease Rat Model

East Wind, West Wind: Toward the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has used herbal remedies for more than 2,000 years. The use of complimentary therapies has increased dramatically during the last years, especially in the West, and the incorporation and modernization of TCM in current medical practice is gaining momentum. We reflect on the main bottlenecks in the modernization of arcane Chinese herbal medicine: lack of standardization, safety concerns and poor quality of clinical trials, as well as the ways these are being overcome. Progress in these areas will facilitate the implementation of an efficacy approach, in which only successful clinical trials lead to the molecular characterization of active compounds and their mechanism of action. Traditional pharmacological methodologies will produce novel leads and drugs, and we describe TCM successes such as the discovery of artemisinin as well as many others still in the pipeline. Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, cancer and cardiovascular disease are the main cause of mortality in the Western world and, with an increasing old population in South East Asia, this trend will also increase in the Far East. TCM has been used for long time for treating these diseases in China and other East Asian countries. However, the holistic nature of TCM requires a paradigm shift. By changing our way of thinking, from "one-target, one-drug" to "network-target, multiple-component-therapeutics," network pharmacology, together with other system biology methodologies, will pave the way toward TCM modernization.

Medicine-food herb: Angelica sinensis, a potential therapeutic hope for Alzheimer's disease and related complications

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, which has brought a huge burden to the world. The current therapeutic approach of one-molecule-one-target strategy fails to address the issues of AD because of multiple pathological features of AD. Traditionally, the herb of Angelica sinensis (AS) comes from the root of an umbrella plant Angelica sinensis (Oliv.) Diels. As a typical medicine-food herb, studies have shown that AS can alleviate AD and AD-complications by multiple targets through the various foundations of pharmaceutical material and dietary supply basis. Therefore, this review summarizes the pharmacological effects of AS for the treatment of AD and AD-complications for the first time. AS contains many effective components, such as ligustilide, z-ligustilide, n-butylidenephthalide, α-pinene, p-cymene, myrcene, ferulic acid, vanillic acid and coniferyl ferulate. It is found that AS, AS-active compounds and AS-compound recipes mainly treat AD through neuroprotective, anti-inflammation, and anti-oxidant effects, improving mitochondrial dysfunction, anti-neuronal apoptosis, regulating autophagy, regulating intestinal flora and enhancing the central cholinergic system, which shows the multi-component and multi-target effect of AS. The role of dietary supplement components in AS for AD intervention is summarized, including vitamin B₁₂, folic acid, arginine, and oleic acid, which can improve the symptoms of AD. Besides, this review focuses on the safety and toxicity evaluation of AS, which provides a basis for its application. This review will provide further support for the research on AD and the application of medicine-food herb AS in a healthy lifestyle in the future.

Anti-Alzheimer's disease potential of traditional chinese medicinal herbs as inhibitors of BACE1 and AChE enzymes

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common neurodegenerative disease that often occurs in the elderly population. At present, most drugs for AD on the market are single-target drugs, which have achieved certain success in the treatment of AD. However, the efficacy and safety of single-target drugs have not achieved the expected results because AD is a multifactorial disease. Multi-targeted drugs act on multiple factors of the disease network to improve efficacy and reduce adverse reactions. Therefore, the search for effective dual-target or even multi-target drugs has become a new research trend. Many of results found that the dual-target inhibitors of the beta-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1) and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) found from traditional Chinese medicine have a good inhibitory effect on AD with fewer side effects. This article reviews sixty-six compounds extracted from Chinese medicinal herbs, which have inhibitory activity on BACE1 and AChE. This provides a theoretical basis for the further development of these compounds as dual-target inhibitors for the treatment of AD.