For the first time, antioxidative gingerols were isolated from Dracocephalum heterophyllum, and the potential target proteins for their antioxidant effects were HO-1 and NOX2.
Dracocephalum heterophyllum (D. heterophyllum) is a traditional Chinese Tibetan medicine that has been used for the treatment of lymphitis, hepatitis, and bronchitis. However, only a few selected chemical components are currently obtained from D. heterophyllum, which limits its further pharmacological applications. In this study, we have obtained samwinol from D. heterophyllum by medium- and high-pressure liquid chromatography separation for the first time. Thereafter, we investigated the protective actions of samwinol against amyloid beta protein fragment 25–35 (Aβ25–35) induced neurotoxicity in cultured rat pheochromocytoma PC-12 cells and explored its underlying mechanisms of action. The results indicated that samwinol could increase cell viability and inhibit the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and mitochondria-derived ROS, as assessed by MTT assay, Giemsa staining, and flow cytometry assay. Through Western blot analysis, it was found that samwinol substantially inhibited the phosphorylation of ERK(1/2) and promoted the expression of HO-1 and Nrf2. The data obtained from molecular docking were also consistent with the above conclusions. All of these results showed that samwinol from D. heterophyllum can display significant anti-neuroinflammatory and antioxidant activities in vitro, which are associated with the suppression of ERK/AKT phosphorylation and the activation of the Nrf2/HO-1 signaling pathway. In the future, additional in-depth mechanism studies will be carried out to provide more evidence for the potential of samwinol in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
Traditional Tibetan medicine has extensively documented the health benefits of Dracocephalum heterophyllum. However, there are few reports on the chemical composition of furanocoumarins, probably because of their complicated isolation and purification procedures. In this study, four antioxidative furanocoumarins were isolated from Dracocephalum heterophyllum by medium‐ and high‐pressure liquid chromatography in combination with on‐line high‐performance liquid chromatography−1,1‐diphenyl‐2‐picrylhydrazyl recognition. Crude samples were sequentially pretreated by medium‐pressure liquid chromatography using silica gel, MCI GEL CHP20P, and diol as stationary phases, whereas on‐line high‐performance liquid chromatography−1,1‐diphenyl‐2‐picrylhydrazyl system was used to recognize antioxidant peaks in target fractions. Thereafter, the antioxidative peaks were separated and purified through high‐pressure liquid chromatography to obtain four furanocoumarins with purities greater than 95%; namely isodemethylfuropinarine, demethylfuropinarine, alloimperatorin, and alloisoimperatorin. Finally, the antioxidant capacity of the isolated furanocoumarins was determined using in vitro experiments (1,1‐diphenyl‐2‐picrylhydrazyl assays, molecular docking, and cellular validation) and it was concluded that nuclear factor erythroid 2‐related factor 2 protein is a potential target of these compounds for their antioxidation effects. Thus, the proposed methodology exhibits excellent efficacy for the preparative isolation of high‐purity antioxidative furanocoumarins from extracts of Dracocephalum heterophyllum and it can be efficiently utilized for isolating antioxidants from other natural products.
For low accuracy in the recognition and evaluation of unarmed fitness activities, analyzing the impact of the diversity of the execution speed of unarmed fitness activities on the recognition and evaluation results, a contactless recognition and evaluation method of unarmed fitness activities has been proposed by using the normalization to improve dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm. As can be seen, the proposed method can reduce the influence of activity execution speed change on activity recognition and evaluation, so as to improve the contactless recognition accuracy of unarmed fitness activities. Meanwhile, the overall recognition accuracy can reach 0.91, and the positive rate can be more than 0.84, which has strong robustness.
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