ABSTRACT
Plants have been the basis of many traditional medicines throughout the world for thousands of years and continue to provide new remedies to mankind. Plants have been one of the important sources of medicines since the beginning of human civilization. The recent resurgence of plant remedies resulted from several factors, such as effectiveness of plant medicines and lesser side effects compared with modern medicines. Psoralea corylifolia, commonly known as babchi, is a popular herb, which has since long been used in traditional Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine for its magical effects to cure various skin diseases. This plant is also pharmacologically studied for its chemoprotective, antioxidant, antimicrobial, and antiinflammatory properties. This review attempts to highlight the available literature on P. corylifolia with respect to its ethnobotany, pharmacognostic characteristics, traditional uses, chemical constituents, and summary of its various pharmacologic activities and clinical effects. Other aspects, such as toxicology and precautions are also discussed. This will be helpful to create interest toward babchi and may be useful in developing new formulations with more therapeutic and economical value.
ABSTRACT
We describe the synthesis and biological characterization of a novel prototype, namely, silica nanoconjugates bearing a covalently linked berberine, a plant alkaloid known to have antiproliferative activity. The effect of synthesized nanoconjugates on cell proliferation, the cell cycle profile, and apoptosis in the human cervical carcinoma cell line (HeLa), human hepatocellular liver carcinoma cell line (HepG2), and human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293T cell line has been studied and compared with the results obtained for free berberine. Our results show that all the nanoconjugates display higher antiproliferative activity than free berberine. The ability of these nanoconjugates to inhibit cellular proliferation is mediated by the cell cycle arrest at the G1 phase. Moreover, silica nanoconugates caused selective apoptotic arrest with a higher efficiency than free berberine followed by apoptotic cell death as shown by quantitative fluorescence-activated cell sorting analyses. Efficiency of the nanoconjugates increases upon an increase in the linker chain length, demonstrating the distinct role of the spacer chain that conjugates nanoparticles and ligands. The actual reason to show enhanced efficiency by the nanoconjugates has not been elucidated in the present study; however, we hypothesize that an increase in local concentration due to the confinement of a ligand on the nanosurface ("dendritic" effect) might have led to the observed effect.
