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Metabolomics and genomics: revealing the mechanism of corydalis alkaloid on anti-inflammation in vivo and in vitro

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Abstract

As one of the major active components of Qizhiweitong (QZWT) prescription, corydalis alkaloid (CA) has been reported to have noticeable effect of anti-inflammation in pharmacological studies. However, the anti-inflammatory function and potential mechanism of CA in anti-inflammation remain to be clarified. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate the anti-inflammation efficacy and potential mechanism of CA in anti-inflammation by metabonomic approach coupled with related gene analyzes in vivo and in vitro. Mice acute inflammation was induced by subcutaneous injection of formalin in hind paws, and evaluated the anti-inflammatory effect of CA via detecting the index of paw edema. The results indicated that CA has an anti-inflammatory effect on mice through alleviating the paw edema significantly. Moreover, metabolic profiling was performed by high performance liquid chromatography quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometer (HPLC-QTOF-MS) combined with multivariate data analysis, such as principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). Thirteen metabolic targets (including lysophosphatidylcholine (LysoPC), choline, arachidonic acid, phosphodimethylethanolamine) and related pathways of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory and arachidonic acid (AA) metabolism were identified, Meanwhile, the relevant target genes, like iNOS, NF-κB, TNF-α, were detected and verified in vitro. The results indicated that CA has a good pharmacological effect of anti-inflammation through regulating multiple disordered targets and metabolic networks, which provides a theoretical basis for further research on CA. Furthermore, there is a great potential for the development of CA to be a new anti-inflammatory drug with high effective activities, little side effects and weak drug resistance.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81241111) and the project of institutions of higher learning talents to support in Liaoning province (No. LR2013044).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. School of Pharmacy, Liaoning University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Dalian, China

      Yan Wang, Tianjiao Li, Xiansheng Meng, Yongrui Bao, Shuai Wang, Xin Chang & Guanlin Yang

    2. Component medicine Engineering Research Center of Liaoning Province, Dalian, China

      Tianjiao Li, Xiansheng Meng, Yongrui Bao & Shuai Wang

    3. Liaoning Province Modern Chinese Medicine Research Engineering Laboratory, Dalian, China

      Tianjiao Li, Xiansheng Meng, Yongrui Bao & Shuai Wang

    4. Liaoning University of Traditional Chinese Medicine-Agilent Technologies Modern TCM and Multi-omics Research Collaboration Lab, Dalian, China

      Tianjiao Li, Xiansheng Meng, Yongrui Bao, Shuai Wang & Tao Bo

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    1. Yan Wang
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    Correspondence to Xiansheng Meng.

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    Yan Wang and Tianjiao Li contributed equally to this work.

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    Wang, Y., Li, T., Meng, X. et al. Metabolomics and genomics: revealing the mechanism of corydalis alkaloid on anti-inflammation in vivo and in vitro. Med Chem Res 27, 669–678 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00044-017-2092-6

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