Enhancement Study of Macrophage Phagocytic Activity and the Quality Evaluation of Dioscorea opposita Thunb. Based on the Analysis of High Content Screening / 中国药学杂志

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To compare the differences of macrophages phagocytic activities between Dioscorea opposita Thunb. cv. Tiegun(abbreviated as TG) and Dioscorea opposita Thunb. but not Tiegun(abbreviated as NTG). METHODS: CCK-8 assay was used to test the cytotoxicity. On the basis of non-toxic dose, the high content screening(HCS) cell imaging analysis was applied to test the phagocytic ability of RAW264.7 cells engulfing GFP-E. coli in vitro, and the phagocytic rates between different kinds of samples at various concentrations were calculated. Furthermore, the biological potency was measured according to the qualitative response parallel method to better evaluate the difference of TG and NTG, by translating phagocytic rates into biological potency. RESULTS: At the range of 0.695 - 5.56 mg(crude drug) •mL-1, all 11 batches samples have no toxicity. The results of HCS displayed that every sample could promote cell phagocytic activity in varying degrees at a certain concentration. RAW264.7 cells could engulf the GFP-E. coli, and the images of HCS reflected the situation of phagocytosis clearly. In addition, the results of biopotency showed that the biopotency value of different samples was between 39.56 to 100, and the average biopotency value of TG was significantly higher than NTG (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: In vitro experiments showed that all the samples could promote the phagocytic activity of RAW264.7 cells at different degrees. And the average biopotency value of TG was significantly higher than NTG, which is consistent with the saying that "TG has a better quality".