Application of Herbal Medicine as Proliferation and Differentiation Effectors of Human Stem Cells

Abstract

One of the main streams of traditional medicine is herbal medicine; a wide range of medicinal plants and their individual parts are used for therapy. Though not scientifically validated, this traditional medicine practice is much popular in countries such as India, China and Sri Lanka and in many other countries in South, Southeast and Eastern Asia due mainly to its healing capabilities. More recently, scientists initiated the chemical analyses of these medicinal plants, obtaining invaluable results. The latest addition to such investigations is studies on effects of herbal extracts on different types of stem cells. An extensive summary of such reported studies is presented in this chapter, mainly categorizing these into proliferation stimulatory effects on stem cells and inhibitory effects on cancer stem cells (CSCs), where both properties are beneficial in cell therapy procedures. At present, standardizing the products and limited knowledge on the mechanisms of action and pathways of these have critically limited the use of herbal extracts in therapeutics. However, we believe that in the near future scientists would be focusing on herbal remedies to replace the use of synthetic stimulants and cancer drugs to overcome the disadvantages of these, such as toxicity, side effects and exorbitant costs.

Microarray analysis of verbenalin-treated human amniotic epithelial cells reveals therapeutic potential for Alzheimer’s Disease

“…and their bioactive compounds have received considerable attention because of their distinct pharmacology profiles, such as the rapid onset of action, less side effect profile, potential drug synergies, and most importantly because of their ability to improve proliferation, differentiation and therapeutic efficacy of stem cells [2,4,[12][13][14]. On the other hand, microarray gene expression profiling is a useful tool to explore genome-wide expression patterns that are activated during studied biological conditions and provides a foundation for further examination of molecular mechanisms and regulatory pathways.…”

“…Recent advanced researches on plant extracts and their bioactive compounds are bringing into light their importance in regenerative medicine. In this regard, several priming approaches using natural compounds have been proposed in recent years to activate stem cells for proliferation and differentiation and to improve the survival, function, and therapeutic efficacy of stem cells [12][13][14]. Moreover, recent evidence shows that the outcome of stem cell therapy in neurodegenerative diseases can be improved through the combination of adjunct treatments [15,16].…”

Regulating Early Biological Events in Human Amniotic Epithelial Stem Cells Using Natural Bioactive Compounds: Extendable Multidirectional Research Avenues

“…Biologically active compounds have been incorporated into stem cell research to maintain stem cell proliferation or to facilitate controlled differentiation into more defined tissues (Udalamaththa et al, 2016;Udagama and Udalamaththa, 2018;Saud et al, 2019). Our previous studies have suggested the potential of natural compounds in optimizing the microenvironment and regulating the early biological events to induce directed differentiation of hAESCs.…”

“…On the other hand, natural resource-derived biologically active compounds, such as polyphenols, flavonoids, tannins, terpenoids, and fatty acids, have long been investigated for promoting cell division, and differentiation of pluripotent and adult stem cells (PSCs) under standard culture conditions (Udalamaththa et al, 2016;Udagama and Udalamaththa, 2018). Effects of plant extracts and their bioactive compounds on the proliferation and differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been extensively studied (Kornicka et al, 2017;Saud et al, 2019;Maeda, 2020).…”

Global Gene Expression Profiling Reveals Isorhamnetin Induces Hepatic-Lineage Specific Differentiation in Human Amniotic Epithelial Cells

“…In this context, a new research stream has been evolving to use medicinal plant extracts as stimulants of stem cells because of their high availability, low toxicity, and minimum side effects (Udalamaththa et al, 2016;Kornicka et al, 2017;Udagama and Udalamaththa, 2018;Saud et al, 2019). However, despite the fact that hAECs were discovered decades ago, few researches have been done on using natural compounds to optimize the microenvironment or to regulate the early biological events for controlled differentiation of hAECs.…”