Proteomic Contributions to Medicinal Plant Research: From Plant Metabolism to Pharmacological Action

Abstract

Herbal medicine is a clinical practice of utilizing medicinal plant derivatives for therapeutic purposes. It has an enduring history worldwide and plays a significant role in the fight against various diseases. Herbal drug combinations often exhibit synergistic therapeutic action compared with single-constituent dosage, and can also enhance the cytotoxicity induced by chemotherapeutic drugs. To explore the mechanism underlying the pharmacological action of herbs, proteomic approaches have been applied to the physiology of medicinal plants and its effects on animals. This review article focuses on the existing proteomics-based medicinal plant research and discusses the following topics: (i) plant metabolic pathways that synthesize an array of bioactive compounds; (ii) pharmacological action of plants tested using in vivo and in vitro studies; and (iii) the application of proteomic approaches to indigenous plants with scarce sequence information. The accumulation of proteomic information in a biological or medicinal context may help in formulating the effective use of medicinal plants.

Differentially expressed plasma proteins of β-thalassemia/hemoglobin E patients in response to curcuminoids/vitamin E antioxidant cocktails

“…Although the beneficial effects of these antioxidant cocktails in thalassemic patients have been demonstrated, the underlying mechanisms of such effects still remain to be elucidated. Notably, proteomic approach has been widely used to explore biomolecular alteration associated with therapeutic effects of herbal extract in various diseases [9][10][11].…”