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Anti-Cancer Agents from Natural Sources
Published in Rohit Dutt, Anil K. Sharma, Raj K. Keservani, Vandana Garg, Promising Drug Molecules of Natural Origin, 2020
Debasish Bandyopadhyay, Felipe Gonzalez
Anthraquinones are naturally occurring aromatic compounds, found in certain plant families viz. Fabaceae, Liliaceae, Polygonaceae, and Rhamnaceae. Their presence are seen in marine-derived fungi, for example, Microsporum sp. The major use of anthraquinones is as color pigment and they are used commercially to prepare natural dyes. Anthraquinones affect the cell cycle of malignant cells by disrupting it. Cancer cells may follow diverse pathways to avoid the influence of antineoplastic medicines which eventually may result in DNA damage. To make sure that DNA is not damaged, checkpoint proteins are able to control pathways by manipulating cell cycle. Tumorigenesis occurs when the tumor is formed because the cells lose checkpoint controls, this is the main reason why chemotherapy is required to regulate the cell cycle. Aside from being used commercially, anthraquinones are used extensively in pharma industries. For instance, Rheum palmatum or Rhubarb, a good source of anthraquinones, is still being used today. Traditionally, Rhubarb is used as a phytomedicine to treat constipation, jaundice, and some ulcers. But studies conducted on Rhubarb determined that its anthraquinones are able to prevent the proliferation of numerous cancer cells.
Catalog of Herbs
Published in James A. Duke, Handbook of Medicinal Herbs, 2018
Cultivated primarily as a spice, seeds are used in preparing vermouth, benedictine, chartreuse,37 and as a flavoring in wines and perfumes. Roots are used with jumper berries in gin. Oil from the seed is used to flavor custards and bread. It is cultivated also as a fresh vegetable, or cooked and prepared like rhubarb. Leaves used to flavor fish dishes and rhubarb jams. Stems are candied and used on cakes and buns, or made into jams and jellies. Ripe fruits are used to make teas (not known to contain xanthine alkaloids). The roots and rhizomes have a pungent aromatic taste and are used commercially in medicines and confections. Roots have been used to flavor cigarette tobacco. Oil extracted from the seeds or roots (fresh roots yield 0.10 to 0.37%, dried roots, 0.35 to 1.00%), is used as an insect attractant (e.g., for Mediterranean fruit fly).
Rhubarb
Published in Mahendra Rai, Shandesh Bhattarai, Chistiane M. Feitosa, Ethnopharmacology of Wild Plants, 2021
Gan B. Bajracharya, Richa K. Gupta
The plants included in the genus Rheum, belonging to the family Polygonaceae, are collectively called as rhubarb (Agarwal et al. 2001, Wang and Ren 2009, Tayade et al. 2012, Zheng et al. 2013, Akram and Azhar 2016, Malik et al. 2016, Ghorbani et al. 2019) (Figure 18.1). Rhubarb is one of the oldest and most frequently used medicinal herbs that is mainly distributed in the mountainous regions of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau area and Asian interior (Losina-Losinskaya 1936). It has been in use for more than 2000 years in the traditional medical systems and is known as the ‘Lord or King of herbs’ (Wang et al. 2005). They are perennial herbs and bear large leaves with thick succulent petioles. Wild rhubarb is used in herbal medicines. Some rhubarb is grown as a vegetable and used for culinary arts, while few others are grown as ornamental plants. Rhubarb is a member of vegetables, which is enriched with vitamin C and dietary fiber, but is often thought to be a fruit (Lloyd 2008). Particularly, R. x hybridum is an ancient garden rhubarb of unknown origin (possibly Siberia) that was grown as a vegetable in England and Scandinavia in the early 18th century (Bratsch and Mainville 2009, Lee et al. 2017). Stem, flower and leaf stalk of R. officinale and R. rhaponticum are also used as food (Agarwal 1986). The red stalks, but not the roots or leaves, are widely used for puddings, preservation and wine. The leaves of rhubarb are non-edible because of their oxalic acid (soluble oxalates) contents, which are poisonous. The flavor present in rhubarb is also used in the preparation of jam, jelly and sauce (Prior 2009).
Improved oral bioavailability and anti-chronic renal failure activity of chrysophanol via mixed polymeric micelles
Published in Journal of Microencapsulation, 2021
Mingjia Gu, Lidan Lu, Qingxue Wei, Zhiwei Miao, Hang Zhang, Leiping Gao, Lejun Li
Chronic renal failure (CRF) is the final pathological outcome of all kinds of chronic kidney diseases (CKD). It is regarded as one of the major public health problems in China (Zhang et al.2012). In particular, a typical characteristic of CRF is renal interstitial fibrosis (Harris and Neilson 2006). Usually, the main pathological changes associated with CRF include atrophy or dilation of renal tubules, infiltration of inflammatory cells and matrix deposition (Zeisberg et al.2001). Although there are many works about the pathological mechanism of CRF in recent years, the treatment options have been very scarce. With the development of medical technology, the treatments for haemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis and kidney transplantation are gradually developing, but their application is limited due to high cost and insufficient kidney source. In China, some natural medicines have been used to treat various diseases, but due to the lack of data support for the mechanism of some natural medicines, their therapeutic effects have not been fully recognised. As traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), rhubarb is widely used in clinical treatment of various types of CRF (Zhang 1991), and has achieved good results, while there are few reports of serious adverse reactions. In the last decade, many basic experiments (Wang et al.2009, Zhu et al.2011, Tu et al.2017, Zhang et al.2017) have confirmed that rhubarb and its main components, such as emodin and rhein, could effectively improve renal fibrosis and inflammatory cell infiltration in CRF rats, thereby exerting a protective effect on the kidney.
Application of a DSS colitis model in toxicologically assessing norisoboldine
Published in Toxicology Mechanisms and Methods, 2020
Mincong Huang, Jie Su, Zhaohuan Lou, Feng Xie, Wei Pan, Zhengbiao Yang, Liqiang Gu, Fang Xie, Zhiwei Xu, Lili Zhang, Fang Liu, Huimin Lai, Lijiang Zhang, Nengming Lin
With improved evaluation levels in drug research, the business community and regulatory authorities have realized the limitations of using healthy animals in drug research. These deficiencies have been confirmed in comparative analyses of nonclinical safety test data and clinical trial data as well as in safety study tests in animals with different health statuses. Drug toxicity differs distinctly between morbid and healthy animals. Adverse reactions may not occur in healthy animals but might occur in morbid patients. For example, drugs that do not cause hepatotoxicity in healthy animals may cause irreversible liver damage or serious adverse events in patients with abnormal or decreased liver function (Wang et al. 2011). Conversely, some adverse reactions may not occur in patients with pathological conditions but may occur in healthy animals. Animals with liver damage can better tolerate rhubarb than can healthy animals (Fang et al. 2011; Jiang et al. 2012). Animal models may partially be able to compensate for some of the shortcomings of healthy animals. Consequently, to predict the clinical adverse effects of drugs as accurately as possible and reduce the risk of failed clinical applications and drug development, guidelines from institutions such as the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) have indicated that animal models with diseases similar to human diseases can be used to assess drug safety (Food and Drug Administration HHS 2012).
Pharmacokinetics, tissue distribution and excretion of five rhubarb anthraquinones in rats after oral administration of effective fraction of anthraquinones from rheum officinale
Published in Xenobiotica, 2021
Di Zhao, Su-Xiang Feng, Hao-Jie Zhang, Na Zhang, Xue-Fang Liu, Yan Wan, Yu-Xiao Zhou, Jian-Sheng Li
Rhubarb extract is made from the dried rhizome and root of Rheum palmatum L., Rheum tanguticum Maxim. ex Balf., or Rheum officinale Baill (Xiang et al. 2020), which has a wide range of pharmacological functions and physiological activities such as purgative (Huang et al. 2019; Li et al. 2020), choleretic, pancreas protecting (Hu et al. 2018; Chen et al. 2020), anti-inflammatory (He et al. 2010), liver protecting (Wu et al. 2020) and sepsis ameliorating effects (Meng et al. 2020), is commonly used in clinical Chinese medicine for centuries in China. Anthraquinones are polyphenol compounds found in many families of plants such as Rhubarb, Semen Cassiae, Polygoni Multiflori Radix and so on, whereas the anthraquinone content in rhubarb is much higher than in other plants. In rhubarb, anthraquinones, including rhein, aloe-emodin, chrysophanol, emodin, physcion (chemical structures shown in Figure 1) and their glycosides, which have a variety of biological and pharmacological properties such as anticancer (Deitersen et al. 2019), neuroprotective (Li et al. 2019), anti-inflammatory (Hu et al. 2014; Dong et al. 2020), and anti-diabetes (Pandith et al. 2018), are thought to be the major active components. Considering these potentially useful pharmacological effects, our group has done a great amount of works on rhubarb anthraquinones in recent years. We interestingly found that rhubarb anthraquinones possessed protective effects against focal cerebral ischaemia by decreasing plasminogen and fibrinogen, prolonging blood coagulation or resisting the aggregation and adhesion of platelet (Li et al. 2010; Zhu et al. 2017; Guo et al. 2020).