Ophiopogon japonicus strains from different cultivation regions exhibit markedly different properties on cytotoxicity, pregnane X receptor activation and cytochrome P450 3A4 induction

Identification of Ophiopogonis Radix from different producing areas by headspace-gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry analysis

Ophiopogonis Radix can be divided into Zhemaidong (ZMD) and Chuanmaidong (CMD). The main planting areas of ZMD are Cixi City and Sanmen county. The quality and price of Ophiopogonis Radix from different producing areas are different. In this study, the headspace-gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry (HS-GC-IMS) method is used to rapidly identify ZMD and CMD. The method is also used to identify ZMD from Cixi and Sanmen by analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs). A total of 58 VOCs was obtained from ZMD samples with more abundant signals of which 41 were identified. The peak intensities of all VOCs in ZMD and CMD, Cixi and Sanmen data were averaged and then those VOCs whose peak intensities were distributed outside of mean ± 2 standard deviation (μ ± 2σ) were selected as characteristic markers. We selected 14 characteristic markers to establish the characteristic fingerprint of ZMD and CMD, among the 14 VOCs, ZMD contained more eucalyptus oil compounds than CMD, CMD contained more volatile aldehydes than ZMD. We selected 12 characteristic markers for the establishment of the characteristic fingerprint of ZMD from Cixi and Sanmen. The principal component analysis (PCA) results indicated that both ZMD and CMD or ZMD from Cixi and Sanmen could be effectively divided. The ZMD and CMD as well as ZMD from Cixi and Sanmen were evaluated by partial least squares regression-discriminants analysis (PLS-DA) resulting to be excellent chemical descriptors for sample discrimination. One hundred percent classification rates for both PLS-DA calibration and prediction models were obtained. These results provided a reference for the traceability of species and origin and market standard of Ophiopogonis Radix. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Ophiopogonis Radix can be divided into Zhejiang Ophiopogonis Radix (ZMD) and Sichuan Ophiopogonis Radix (CMD). As far as ZMD is concerned, its producing areas mainly include the traditional planting areas (Cixi City) and new growth areas (Sanmen county). In this paper, the HS-GC-IMS method was adopted to analyze VOCs in Ophiopogonis Radix from different producing areas and then we screen out the respective characteristic VOCs of ZMD and CMD as well as ZMD from Cixi and Sanmen. These characteristic VOCs can effectively identify ZMD and CMD as well as ZMD from Cixi City and Sanmen country to provide a scientific basis for the origin identification of Ophiopogonis Radix.

Rapid identification of cytochrome P450 inductive constituents of Shenmai injection by combined pregnane X receptor reporter gene assay and LC-TOF-MS analysis

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

Identifying the inductive constituents of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is important in characterizing the safety of ethnopharmacological herbal preparations.

AIM OF THE STUDY

This study provides a rapid and accurate method for screening CYP inducers in Shenmai injection (SMI), a traditional Chinese medicine.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We combined a pregnane X receptor (PXR) reporter gene assay and liquid chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-TOF-MS) analysis to screen ethanol and aqueous extracts of SMI for CYP-inducing constituents.

RESULTS

The ethanol extract exhibited stronger PXR activity than the aqueous extract. Of the 29 chemical compounds identified, 7 compounds with high relative concentrations in the ethanol extract were further evaluated for PXR activity. The highest activity was exhibited by methyl ophiopogonanone B and ginsenoside F2, indicating that they are CYP inducers.

CONCLUSIONS

The identification method applied in this study was rapid and accurate and is suitable for screening CYP inducers in herbal preparations.

Chaihu-Shugan-San Reinforces CYP3A4 Expression via Pregnane X Receptor in Depressive Treatment of Liver-Qi Stagnation Syndrome

Backgrounds. Chaihu-Shugan-San (CSS) is a classic traditional Chinese herbal prescription for treating depression. However, the underlying mechanism of the Chinese syndrome-specific efficacy of CSS is poorly understood. Aim of the Study. From traditional Chinese medicine and pharmacogenetics perspectives, the present study aimed to investigate the antidepressant effects of CSS on a mouse model of Liver-Qi Stagnation (LQS) syndrome and its underlying mechanisms. Methods and Materials. We used two main mouse models of depressive syndromes in the study, including LQS and liver stagnation and spleen deficiency (LSSD) syndrome. Tail suspension and forced swimming tests were used to evaluate the effects of CSS on animal behaviour. The expression level of the CYP450 enzyme from liver microsomes was analysed by western blot (WB) analysis and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). More specifically, we analysed the key compounds of CSS that are responsible for CYP450 regulation via bioinformatics. Ultimately, luciferase assays were employed to confirm the prediction in vitro. Results. CSS remarkably reduced the immobile time in LQS rather than in LSSD mice. Although CSS significantly upregulated CYP2C9 in mice with both syndromes, activated translation of CYP3A4 induced by CSS was only observed in the LQS group. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that the unique regulation of CYP3A4 was responsible for the effects of glycyrrhetinic acid (GA) from CSS. Further luciferase assays confirmed the enhancement of CYP3A4 expression via the pregnane X receptor (PXR) pathway in vitro. Conclusions. CSS specifically upregulates the translation of CYP3A4 via the PXR pathway in depressed LQS mice. GA, a bioactive compound that originates from CSS, contributes to this activation. This work provides novel insight into Chinese syndrome-based therapy for depression.

NP-StructurePredictor: Prediction of Unknown Natural Products in Plant Mixtures

Identification of the individual chemical constituents of a mixture, especially solutions extracted from medicinal plants, is a time-consuming task. The identification results are often limited by challenges such as the development of separation methods and the availability of known reference standards. A novel structure elucidation system, NP-StructurePredictor, is presented and used to accelerate the process of identifying chemical structures in a mixture based on a branch and bound algorithm combined with a large collection of natural product databases. NP-StructurePredictor requires only targeted molecular weights calculated from a list of m/z values from liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) experiments as input information to predict the chemical structures of individual components matching the weights in a mixture. NP-StructurePredictor also provides the predicted structures with statistically calculated probabilities so that the most likely chemical structures of the natural products and their analogs can be proposed accordingly. Four data sets consisting of different Chinese herbs with mixtures containing known compounds were selected for validation studies, and all their components were correctly identified and highly predicted using NP-StructurePredictor. NP-StructurePredictor demonstrated its applicability for predicting the chemical structures of novel compounds by returning highly accurate results from four different validation case studies.

De novo assembly and annotation of the Zhe-Maidong (Ophiopogon japonicus (L.f.) Ker-Gawl) transcriptome in different growth stages

Zhe-Maidong (Ophiopogon japonicus (L.f.) Ker-Gawl) is a traditional medicinal herb in the family Liliaceae that has significant pharmacological effects on immunity and cardiovascular disease. In this study, three different growth stages of Zhe-Maidong were investigated using RNA-seq, and a total of 16.4 Gb of raw data was obtained. After filtering and assembling, 96,738 unigenes with an average length of 605.3 bp were ultimately generated. A total of 77,300 unigenes were annotated using information from five databases, including the NT, NR, SwissProt, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and Gene Ontology (GO) databases. Additionally, the mechanisms of flavonoid, saponin and polysaccharide biosynthesis and of accumulation at different stages of tuber development were also characterized. From the first to third years, the contents of flavonoids, saponins and polysaccharides all increased, whereas the expression levels of related genes decreased in the flavonoid and saponin pathways and first increased and then decreased in the polysaccharide pathway. The results of this study provide the most comprehensive expressed sequence resource for Zhe-Maidong and will expand the available O. japonicus gene library and facilitate further genome-wide research and analyses of this species.

HMGB1 release by H2O2-induced hepatocytes is regulated through calcium overload and 58-F interference

HMGB1 is passively released by injured or dying cells and aggravates inflammatory processes. The release of HMGB1 and calcium overload have each been reported to be important mediators of H₂O₂-induced injury. However, a potential connection between these two processes remains to be elucidated. In the present study, we employed H₂O₂-induced hepatocytes to investigate how calcium overload takes place during cellular injury and how the extracellular release of HMGB1 is regulated by this overload. In addition, we investigated the use of 58-F, a flavanone extracted from Ophiopogon japonicus, as a potential therapeutic drug. We show that the PLCγ1-IP₃R-SOC signalling pathway participates in the H₂O₂-induced disturbance of calcium homoeostasis and leads to calcium overload in hepatocytes. After a rise in intracellular calcium, two calcium-dependent enzymes, PKCα and CaMKIV, are activated and translocated from the cytoplasm to the nucleus to modify HMGB1 phosphorylation. In turn, this promotes HMGB1 translocation from the nucleus to the cytoplasm and subsequent extracellular release. 58-F effectively rescued the hepatocytes by suppressing the PLCγ1-IP₃R-SOC signalling pathway and decreasing the calcium concentration in cells, thus reducing HMGB1 release.

Toxic Constituents Index: A Toxicity-Calibrated Quantitative Evaluation Approach for the Precise Toxicity Prediction of the Hypertoxic Phytomedicine-Aconite

Complex chemical composition is an important reason for restricting herbal quality evaluation. Despite the multi-components determination method significantly promoted the progress of herbal quality evaluation, however, which mainly concerned the total amount of multiple components and ignored the activity variation between each one, and did not accurately reflect the biological activity of botanical medicines. In this manuscript, we proposed a toxicity calibrated contents determination method for hyper toxic aconite, called toxic constituents index (TCI). Initially, we determined the minimum lethal dose value of mesaconitine (MA), aconitine (AC), and hypaconitine (HA), and established the equation TCI = 100 × (0.3387 ×X_MA + 0.4778 ×X_AC + 0.1835 ×X_HA). Then, 10 batches of aconite were selected and their evaluation results of toxic potency (TP), diester diterpenoid alkaloids (DDAs), and TCI were compared. Linear regression analysis result suggested that the relevance between TCI and TP was the highest and the correlation coefficient R was 0.954. Prediction error values study also indicated that the evaluation results of TCI was highly consistent with that of TP. Moreover, TCI and DDAs were both applied to evaluate 14 batches of aconite samples oriented different origins; from the different evaluation results, we found when the proportion of HA was reached 25% in DDAs, the pharmacopeia method could generate false positive results. All these results testified the accuracy and universality of TCI method. We believe that this study method is rather accurate, simple, and easy operation and it will be of great utility in studies of other foods and herbs.

58-F, a flavanone from Ophiopogon japonicus, prevents hepatocyte death by decreasing lysosomal membrane permeability

Lysosome membrane permeabilization (LMP) has been implicated in cell death. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between cell death and H₂O₂-/CCl₄-induced LMP in hepatocytes in vitro and following acute liver injury in vivo. The key finding was that H₂O₂ triggered LMP by oxidative stress, as evidenced by a suppression of LAMP1 expression, a reduction in LysoTracker Green and AO staining, and the leakage of proton and cathepsin B/D from the lysosome to the cytoplasm, resulting in cell death. CCl₄ also triggered hepatocyte death by decreasing lysosome LAMP1 expression and by inducing the accumulation of products of peroxidative lipids and oxidized proteins. Furthermore, a novel compound 5,8-dimethoxy-6-methyl-7-hydroxy-3-3(2-hydroxy-4-methoxybenzyl) chroman-4-one (58-F) was extracted from Ophiopogon japonicus and served as a potential therapeutic drug. In vivo and in vitro results showed that 58-F effectively rescued hepatocytes by decreasing LMP and by inducing lysosomal enzyme translocation to the cytosol.