Evaluation of estrogenic effects of Semen Descurainiae and its action mechanism / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Aim To evaluate the estrogen-like activity of Semen Descurainiae aqueous extracts (SD-ae), to deter-mine its effective chemical separation components and to study the mechanisms. Methods The estrogen-like ac-tivity of SD-ae and its effective chemical separation com-ponents were evaluated by the animal experiment, uterine weight test and cell experiment, namely E-SCREEN ex-periment. Estrogen receptor antagonist ICI182,780 inter-vention blocking experiment was carried out to detect the pathway of estrogen-like action; the HEK293 cells were co-transfected with the report gene carrier and the ERα, ERβ expression vector by cationic liposome, the report gene carrier was constructed via the estrogen-responsive component (ERE) and the report gene luciferase (Luc), then the estrogen-like signaling pathway was evaluated with standardized Luc activity; the expression of estrogen receptor ERα, ERβ and estrogen-induced gene PR mR-NA was detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR. Results Compared with normal control, SD-ae low and high dose could significantly improve the uterine coefficient of immature female mice(P<0.05), and the oligosaccharides composition of Semen Descurainiae aque-ous extracts(SD-ae-Oli) and the polysaccharide composi-tion of Semen Descurainiae aqueous extracts(SD-ae-Pol) also significantly improved the uterine coefficient of im-mature female mice (P<0.01 or P<0.05); SD-ae, SD-ae-Oli and SD-ae-Pol had a significant proliferative effect on MCF-7 cells ( P <0.01 or P <0.05), while ICI182,780 intervened to block its proliferative effect. The reporter gene technology showed that the standardized Luc activities of SD-ae, SD-ae-Oli and SD-ae-Pol were significantly higher than those of the normal control when they were induced by ERβ respectively (P<0.01); and the SD-ae significantly increased the expression of ERβ mRNA in mouse uterus than the normal control, but no effect was found on the expression of ERα and PR mR- NA. Conclusions The estrogenic effect of SD-ae may be found at the first time, and its effective chemical sepa-ration components are SD-ae-Oli and SD-ae-Pol. Their estrogenic effects are mediated by ERβ. The molecular mechanism of the estrogenic effects is probably that SD-ae promotes the expression of ERβ mRNA.