ABSTRACT
Diabetic nephropathy(DN) is a kind of severe diabetes mellitus(DM) complications,which is one of the most common cause of end-stage renal failure.The incidence of DN increases with the increase of the number of DM patients,and early prevention is the key.DM and DN are characteristic advantages of Tibetan medicine,the "holistic view" of dynamic balance based on the three major factors in the body(Sanyin,included rlung,mkhris-pa and bad-gan) is a unique understanding of DM and DN among Tibetan medical practitioners,and which has rich and unique clinical and medication experiences in DN treatment.This paper discussed the medical theory "holistic view" on the Tibetan medicine for DM and DN,dug commonly used Tibetan drugs and Tibetan medical prescriptions for clinical treatment of DN,in order to provide new ideas for the treatment of DN and the discovery of new drugs for DN, and give full play to the unique advantages of Tibetan medicine.
ABSTRACT
Alzheimer disease (AD), the most common dementia, is a chronic, progressive and neuro-degenerative disorder. With an increasing prevalence, AD has been the third cause of death after cardio-vascular diseases and cancer in the elderly population. However, the pathogenesis of AD remains unclear, which has led to a fairly slow development of drugs for AD and a dim view of future treatments of AD. It has been a hot spot and a big challenge to develop effective, therapeutic drugs for AD. Recently, this topic was discussed via WeChat by experts from the Neuropsychiatric WeChat Group, which consists of 300 Chinese-origin neuroscientists and neuropsychiatrists in China or overseas. The experts pointed out the problems that might have misled researches on drug discovery, such as the misleading but dominating AD pathology hypotheses and problems with the platforms for drug screening. Therefore, it is important to review the pathology of AD and the treatment strategies from big data and the overall view of the disease, which may shed new light on AD therapy to develop drugs for multiple targets, leading to omni-direc-tional, comprehensive treatments of AD. The development of AD can be further classified into different stages based on the upstream factors of AD pathology. Interestingly, it has been found that the AD brain has mitochondria damage and dysfunction; long-term exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation can also cause AD-like pathological changes. These provide novel views and ideas in terms of the path-ological process and preventive and therapeutic strategies for AD.
ABSTRACT
Microorganisms have provided abundant sources of natural products, which have been developed as commercial products for human medicine, animal health, and plant crop protection. Avermectin discovered from Streptomyces avermectinius was the first macrocyclic lactones against parasitic worms. The semi-synthetic derivative of avermectin, ivermectin, was used to treat onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis in human. Two scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize for the great contribution to the discovery and research of these drugs. This paper reviewed the study and development of avermectins and ivermectin. This is one of the series papers about historical story on natural medicinal chemistry.
ABSTRACT
The traditional efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is to summarize the clinical efficacy of TCM under the guidance of TCM theory,and it possess important guiding significance for the clinical use of TCM.Comparing with the modern medical system,the TCM system was different from western medicine in diagnosis and treatment modes,and the disease targets of TCM maybe more extensive than that of western medicine.Based on the traditional efficacy of TCM,combined with modern means of science and technology,the research on material basis and pharmacological mechanism of TCM was beneficial to discovery the new targets,new mechanism,new material and the secondary development of new drug of TCM.Furthermore,it also has far-reaching significance on interpret the modern scientific connotation of TCM efficacy.Therefore,deriving from the traditional efficacy of TCM,the research of modern pharmacodynamic material basis is the source for original research.
ABSTRACT
Hair color is affected not only by genetic, age, and environmental factors, but also by the regulation of many cytokines and proteins. The generation of melanin is mainly regulated by POMC, α-MSH, MC1R, MITF, tyrosinase, TRP-1, TRP-2, ASIP, etc. Hair color anomaly is often considered to be a feature of aging which brings great psychological pressure to the people, but the treartment by relevant drugs is still blank. This article summarizes the effect target and the function ways of those natural medicines with great efficacy on the treatment of hair graying. This review may provide some theoretical basis for the application of natural medicines in the treatment of hair graying.
ABSTRACT
Network pharmacology is an emerging discipline based on the Disease-Gene-Drug multilevel network. And it has been used to forecast the drug targets and improve the efficiency of drug discovery. Its research ideas are similar to the overall efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which attracts more and more medical re-searchers to look for the joint point of TCM and network pharmacology. A series of approaches on disease-related genes, predicting the information of target and active ingredients of TCM emerge. In this paper, the network pharma-cology research tools, databases and their applications were summarized and introduced. This paper also proposed scientific strategies to separate active ingredients of TCM using network pharmacology, so as to improve the efficiency and speed of finding active ingredients of TCM.
ABSTRACT
Natural medicines play an important role in keeping the healthy of human beings from past till now. Recently, the importance of natural medicines in research and development of new drugs has been attracted the attention of scientists. The research and development of anti-aging drugs from natural products have captured more and more attention. In this paper, the historical story on the discovery and study of the famous natural anti-aging drug-ginkgolides is summarized in memory of the great discoveries and in honor of the scientists so as to provide the reference for future related research.