Tissue culture of safflower and analysis of secondary metabolites in suspension cells / 中国中药杂志

Safflower(Carthamus tinctorius), a valuable traditional Chinese medicinal plant, has attracted much attention in recent years. This study established a stable tissue culture system of safflower and analyzed the chromatogram of its secondary metabolites, providing high-quality experimental materials for further research on natural products in safflower. The calluses were established from the safflower seeds germinated in a sterile environment, and then they were differentiated into the aseptic seedlings, or cultured to obtain suspension cells in liquid medium. The ultra-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry(UPLC-Q-TOF-MS), Progenesis QI, and principal component analysis(PCA) were used to detect and analyze the secondary metabolites in the suspension cells before and after induction with different elicitors(methyl jasmonate, silver nitrate, salicylic acid and yeast extract). A total of 23 secondary metabolites including flavonoids, phenylpropanoids, alkaloids, fatty acids and aromatic glycosides were detected in safflower suspension cells. In response to the four elicitors, 11 compounds showed increased or decreased relative content. The results indicate that different elicitors have various effects on the accumulation of secondary metabolites in safflower suspension cells, and yeast extract shows more obvious positive induction. Therefore, different elicitors may play a role in the expression of related genes in the biosynthetic pathway of specific secondary metabolites. The results facilitate the discovery of targeted elicitors and the large-scale production of valuable secondary metabolites in the future.

[Clinical cases and experimental evaluation of liver injury related to anti-psoriasis Keyin Pills].

Keyin Pills is a kind of traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of psoriasis, but it has been reported that it can cause serious liver injury. In this paper, we used the integrated evidence chain method to retrieve and reevaluate the adverse drug reaction database, CNKI literature and cases of liver injury relating to Keyin Pills in specialist hepatology hospitals. We screened out 23 cases with the causal relationship of the possible grade and above. Among them, 11 cases showed the positive causal relationship only with Keyin Pills, accounting for 47.83%, suggesting that there was objective liver injury caused by Keyin Pills. The incubation period of liver injury caused by Keyin Pills is 1-90 days, and the cumulative dosage span is 20-1 800 g. There were obvious individual diffe-rences. There was no relationship between liver injury as well as dose and course of treatment, suggesting that Keyin Pills could induce immune idiosyncratic liver injury. Furthermore, based on the liver injury model induced by immunological stress, it was confirmed that Keyin Pills could induce acute liver injury in a dose-dependent manner in rats with immunological stress. The toxic dose(14 g·kg~(-1)) of a single dose was 6.7 times of the clinical equivalent dose, and had no significant effect on the biochemical index of liver function and histopathology in normal rats. Decomposition experiments showed that Dictamnus dasycarpus in Keyin Pills is the main medicinal flavor that causes special liver injury, and the other three medicines had neither liver injury nor compatibility attenuation effect. The results suggest that clinical medication shall pay attention to the risk of liver injury caused by Keyin Pills in patients with immunological stress.

Discussion on research idea of quality marker of Salvia miltiorrhiza based on biosynthetic pathway of tanshinone compounds / 中国中药杂志

Based on the theory of Q-marker, the hairy root of Salvia miltiorrhiza and S. miltiorrhiza in many provinces were studied. The relative expressions of SmCPS, SmKSL and CYP76AH1 genes in hairy roots were detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR and the contents of tanshinoneⅡ_A, cryptotanshinone, tanshinoneⅠ, 1,2-dihydrotanshinone, ferruginol and miltiradiene were detected by UPLC and GC-MS, respectively. Statistical analysis shows as fllows: in the hairy root of S. miltiorrhiza, the content of miltiradiene and ferruginol is positively correlated with the content of tanshinone compounds in the downstream, and the relative expression of important genes in the biosynthetic pathway of tanshinone can reflect the content of tanshinone compounds to a certain extent; in many provinces of S. miltiorrhiza, the content of ferruginol and tanshinone compounds can also be found that there is a positive correlation between the contents. Based on the biosynthetic pathway of tanshinone compounds, which is a special index component in S. miltiorrhiza, this study focused on the important relationship between the upstream gene, the middle intermediate compound and the downstream tanshinone compound content of the biosynthetic pathway, and explored the possible research ideas of improving the quality marker system of S. miltiorrhiza, and then provided the possible research ideas for understanding and studying the quality marker of traditional Chinese medicine from the biosynthetic pathway.