Discovering active components from traditional Chinese medicine by component-knockout approach / 中国中药杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>A component-knockout approach was established to discover active components from traditional Chinese medicine.</p><p><b>METHOD</b>According to the principle of gene knockout technique, an experiment workflow for component-knockout method was developed, which is distinct from the bio-guided screening method. The differences of therapeutic efficacies between different combinations of individual components were analyzed by some statistical methods including Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), whilst a set of criterias were established to assess active components. By comparing the difference of drug efficacy between the original formulae and the mixture being knockout certain component, the active components can be identified.</p><p><b>RESULT</b>The presented component-knockout method was applied to discover the active components of Shenmai formulae for the synergistic effects on the cyclophosphamide chemotherapy for S180 tumor-bearing mice. The results indicated that panoxadiol, a type of ginsenosides, were the effective components of Shenmai formulae.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>A new method for identifying effective components from Chinese medicinal formulae was developed and successfully applied to discover the active components of Shenmai Formulae, which possesses the synergistic actions towards chemotherapy process.</p>