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Immunomodulatory drug discovery from herbal medicines: Insights from organ-specific activity and xenobiotic defenses
Traditional herbal medicines, which emphasize a holistic, patient-centric view of disease treatment, provide an exciting starting point for discovery of new immunomodulatory drugs. Progress on identification of herbal molecules with proven single agent activity has been slow, in part because of insu...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8592567/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34779403 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.73673 |
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author | Shi, Jue Weng, Jui-Hsia Mitchison, Timothy J |
author_facet | Shi, Jue Weng, Jui-Hsia Mitchison, Timothy J |
author_sort | Shi, Jue |
collection | PubMed |
description | Traditional herbal medicines, which emphasize a holistic, patient-centric view of disease treatment, provide an exciting starting point for discovery of new immunomodulatory drugs. Progress on identification of herbal molecules with proven single agent activity has been slow, in part because of insufficient consideration of pharmacology fundamentals. Many molecules derived from medicinal plants exhibit low oral bioavailability and rapid clearance, leading to low systemic exposure. Recent research suggests that such molecules can act locally in the gut or liver to activate xenobiotic defense pathways that trigger beneficial systemic effects on the immune system. We discuss this hypothesis in the context of four plant-derived molecules with immunomodulatory activity: indigo, polysaccharides, colchicine, and ginsenosides. We end by proposing research strategies for identification of novel immunomodulatory drugs from herbal medicine sources that are informed by the possibility of local action in the gut or liver, leading to generation of systemic immune mediators. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8592567 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85925672021-11-17 Immunomodulatory drug discovery from herbal medicines: Insights from organ-specific activity and xenobiotic defenses Shi, Jue Weng, Jui-Hsia Mitchison, Timothy J eLife Biochemistry and Chemical Biology Traditional herbal medicines, which emphasize a holistic, patient-centric view of disease treatment, provide an exciting starting point for discovery of new immunomodulatory drugs. Progress on identification of herbal molecules with proven single agent activity has been slow, in part because of insufficient consideration of pharmacology fundamentals. Many molecules derived from medicinal plants exhibit low oral bioavailability and rapid clearance, leading to low systemic exposure. Recent research suggests that such molecules can act locally in the gut or liver to activate xenobiotic defense pathways that trigger beneficial systemic effects on the immune system. We discuss this hypothesis in the context of four plant-derived molecules with immunomodulatory activity: indigo, polysaccharides, colchicine, and ginsenosides. We end by proposing research strategies for identification of novel immunomodulatory drugs from herbal medicine sources that are informed by the possibility of local action in the gut or liver, leading to generation of systemic immune mediators. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2021-11-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8592567/ /pubmed/34779403 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.73673 Text en © 2021, Shi et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Biochemistry and Chemical Biology Shi, Jue Weng, Jui-Hsia Mitchison, Timothy J Immunomodulatory drug discovery from herbal medicines: Insights from organ-specific activity and xenobiotic defenses |
title | Immunomodulatory drug discovery from herbal medicines: Insights from organ-specific activity and xenobiotic defenses |
title_full | Immunomodulatory drug discovery from herbal medicines: Insights from organ-specific activity and xenobiotic defenses |
title_fullStr | Immunomodulatory drug discovery from herbal medicines: Insights from organ-specific activity and xenobiotic defenses |
title_full_unstemmed | Immunomodulatory drug discovery from herbal medicines: Insights from organ-specific activity and xenobiotic defenses |
title_short | Immunomodulatory drug discovery from herbal medicines: Insights from organ-specific activity and xenobiotic defenses |
title_sort | immunomodulatory drug discovery from herbal medicines: insights from organ-specific activity and xenobiotic defenses |
topic | Biochemistry and Chemical Biology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8592567/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34779403 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.73673 |
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