Ionic Liquid-Based Ultrasonic-Assisted Extraction to Analyze Seven Compounds in Psoralea Fructus Coupled with HPLC.

Psoralea Fructus is widely used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and the content of psoralen, isopsoralen, neobavaisoflavone, bavachin, psoralidin, isobavachalcone, and bavachinin A is the main quality control index of Psoralea Fructus because of its clinical effects. Thus, a fast and environmentally-benign extraction method of seven compounds in Psoralea Fructus is necessary. In this work, an ionic liquid-based ultrasonic-assisted method (ILUAE) for the extraction of seven compounds from Psoralea Fructus was proposed. Several ILs of different types and parameters, including the concentration of ILs, concentration of ethanol (EtOH), solid-liquid ratio, particle size, ultrasonic time, centrifugal speed, and ultrasonic power, were optimized by the Placket-Burman (PB) design and Box-Behnken response surface analysis. Under this optimal condition, the total extraction yield of the seven compounds in Psoralea Fructus was 18.90 mg/g, and significantly greater than the conventional 75% EtOH solvent extraction.

Research Progress on Chemical Constituents and Pharmacological Actions of Psoralea Fructus / 中国实验方剂学杂志

Psoralea Fructus,a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine in clinical application,is warm, spicy and bitter in nature and belongs to the kidney and spleen meridian. Psoralea Fructus has the function of warming kidney and tonifying yang,absorbing Qi and relieving asthma,warming spleen and stopping diarrhea,and in topical use, it can remove beverage. In recent years,considerable progress has been made in the study of chemical constituents and pharmacological effects of Psoralea Fructus. Nearly one hundred compounds have been isolated from it,including coumarins,flavonoids,and meroterpenes,and various types of compounds such as lipids,glycosides,volatile oils,and trace elements have been also found in Psoralea Fructus. In this article, the original literature was reviewed to summarize the main compound types and structural formula, with detailed reviews on pharmacological studies about its anti-tumor,anti-oxidant,anti-bacterial,anti-inflammatory,anti-depressive,regulating estrogen level,promoting bone growth,liver protection,and neuroprotection effects. In addition, the compounds with the same or similar pharmacological effects were sorted out and summarized to correlate the chemical structure and pharmacology. Psoralea Fructus and its modern preparations are widely used in modern clinical practice. The researches and papers on chemical constituents of Psoralea Fructus at home and abroad and the papers on pharmacological activities in recent years were reviewed,and the chemical types of individual compounds were corrected in this article,providing a reference for further study of Psoralea Fructus in efficacy material basis,quality standards and pharmacological activities.

Anti-cancer activity of Psoralea fructus through the downregulation of cyclin D1 and CDK4 in human colorectal cancer cells.

BACKGROUND: Psoralea Fructus (PF), the dried and ripe fruit of Psoralea corylifolia exhibits an anti-cancer activity. However, the molecular mechanisms by which PF inhibits the proliferation of cancer cells have not been elucidated in detail. Cyclin D1 and CDK4 are important regulatory proteins in cell growth and are overexpressed in many cancer cells. In this study, we investigated the molecular mechanism of PF on the downregulation of cyclin D1 and CDK4 level. METHODS: Cell growth was evaluated by MTT assay. The effect of PF on cyclin D1 and CDK4 expression was evaluated by Western blot or RT-PCR. RESULTS: PF suppressed the proliferation of human colorectal cancer cell lines such as HCT116 (IC50: 45.3 ± 1.2 µg/ml), SW480 (IC50: 37.9 ± 1.6 µg/ml), LoVo (IC50: 23.3 ± 1.9 µg/ml µg/ml) HT-29 (IC50 value: 40.7 ± 1.5 µg/ml). PF induced decrease in the protein expression of cyclin D1 and CDK4. However, the mRNA expression of cyclin D1 and CDK4 did not be changed by PF; rather it suppressed the expression of cyclin D1 and CDK4 via the proteasomal degradation. In cyclin D1 degradation, we found that T286 of cyclin D1 play a pivotal role in PF-mediated cyclin D1 degradation. Subsequent experiments with several kinase inhibitors suggest that PF-mediated degradation of cyclin D1 and CDK4 is dependent on ERK1/2 and/or GSK3ß. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that PF has potential to be a candidate for the development of chemoprevention or therapeutic agents for human colorectal cancer.

Quality Assessment of Psoralea fructus by HPLC Fingerprint Coupled with Multi-components Analysis.

Psoralea Fructus, the dried and ripe fruit of Psoralea corylifolia L., have been used as traditional medicine. There is substantial evidence that multiple constituents are responsible for the beneficial effects of this medicine. To effectively control the quality of this herbal medicine, HPLC fingerprint analysis was performed on a SinoChrom ODS-BP column with mobile phase of a gradient prepared from H2O and CH3CN, which the conditions used for gradient elution were: 0-10 min, 5-45% CH3CN; 10-45 min, 45-70% CH3CN; 45-50 min, 70-100% CH3CN; 50-60 min, 100-100% CH3CN, and the flow rate was 1.0 ml/min. It was obtained on the basis of the chromatographic data from 28 batches of samples, which contained 26 common peaks and 13 peaks were identified by the electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry as psoralen, isopsoralen, isobavachin, neobavaisoflavone, bavachin, corylin, broussochalcone B, psoralidin, isobavachalcone, bavachinin, corylifol A, bavachalcone and backuchiol. The contents of these 13 compounds were also simultaneously examined. By using principal component analysis, 28 batches of samples collected from 6 producing locations with different collecting time were evaluated and differentiated. In summary, the data as described in this study offer valuable information for quality control and proper use of Psoralea Fructus.