Drug Discovery of Plausible Lead Natural Compounds That Target the Insulin Signaling Pathway: Bioinformatics Approaches

The growing smooth talk in the field of natural compounds is due to the ancient and current interest in herbal medicine and their potentially positive effects on health. Dozens of antidiabetic natural compounds were reported and tested in vivo, in silico, and in vitro. The role of these natural compounds, their actions on the insulin signaling pathway, and the stimulation of the glucose transporter-4 (GLUT4) insulin-responsive translocation to the plasma membrane (PM) are all crucial in the treatment of diabetes and insulin resistance. In this review, we collected and summarized a group of available in vivo and in vitro studies which targeted isolated phytochemicals with possible antidiabetic activity. Moreover, the in silico docking of natural compounds with some of the insulin signaling cascade key proteins is also summarized based on the current literature. In this review, hundreds of recent studies on pure natural compounds that alleviate type II diabetes mellitus (type II DM) were revised. We focused on natural compounds that could potentially regulate blood glucose and stimulate GLUT4 translocation through the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (Akt) pathway. On attempt to point out potential new natural antidiabetic compounds, this review also focuses on natural ingredients that were shown to interact with proteins in the insulin signaling pathway in silico, regardless of their in vitro/in vivo antidiabetic activity. We invite interested researchers to test these compounds as potential novel type II DM drugs and explore their therapeutic mechanisms.

A novel Rhein derivative: Activation of Rac1/NADPH pathway enhances sensitivity of nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells to radiotherapy

Radiation resistance and recurrent have become the major factors resulting in poor prognosis in the clinical treatment of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). New strategies to enhance the efficacy of radiotherapy have been focused on the development of radiosensitizers and searching for directly targets that modulated tumor radiosensitivity. A novel potential radiosensitizer 1,8-Dihydroxy -3-(2'-(4″-methylpiperazin-1″-yl) ethyl-9,10-anthraquinone -3-carboxylate (RP-4) was designed and synthesized based on molecular docking technology, which was expected to regulate the radiosensitivity of tumor cells through targeting Rac1. In order to assess the radiosensitization activity of RP-4 on NPC cells, the highly differentiated CNE1 and poorly differentiated CNE2 cells NPC lines were employed. According to the results, RP-4 showed higher binding affinity toward the interaction with Rac1 than lead compounds. We found that RP-4 could inhibit cell viability and proliferation in CNE1 and CNE2 cells and significantly induced apoptosis after non-toxic concentration of RP-4 combined with 2Gy irradiation. RP-4 could effectively modulated the radiosensitivity both CNE1 cells and CNE2 cells through activating Rac1/NADPH signaling pathway and its downstream JNK/AP-1 pathway. What's more, Rac1/NADPH signaling pathway were significantly activated in Rac1-overexpressed CNE1 and CNE2 cells after treated with RP-4. Taken together, Rac1 and its downstream pathway may probably be the direct targets of RP-4 in regulating radiosensitivity of NPC cells, our finding provided a novel strategy for the development of therapeutic agents in response to tumorous radiation resistance.