Study of the Biotransformation of Tongmai Formula by Human Intestinal Flora and Its Intestinal Permeability across the Caco-2 Cell Monolayer

Molecules

Shuai Wu²  Wei Xu²  Fu-Rong Wang²  Xiu-Wei Yang¹ 

[1] State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs, Department of Natural Medicines, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Peking University, No. 38, Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, China;

关键词: tongmai formula;    isoflavone;    HPLC;    traditional Chinese medicine;    human intestinal flora;    biotransformation;    human Caco-2 cells monolayer;   

DOI  :  10.3390/molecules201018704

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Tongmai formula (TMF) is a well-known Chinese medicinal preparation that contains isoflavones as its major bioactive constituents. As traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) are usually used by oral administration, their fate inside the intestinal lumen, including their biotransformation by human intestinal flora (HIF) and intestinal absorption deserves study. In this work TMF extract was incubated with human intestinal bacteria under anaerobic conditions and the changes in the twelve main constituents of TMF were then investigated. Their intestinal permeabilities, i.e., the transport capability across the intestinal brush border were investigated with a human colon carcinoma cell line (Caco-2) cell monolayer model to predict the absorption mechanism. Meanwhile, rapid HPLC-DAD methods were established for the assay. According to the biotransformation curves of the twelve constituents and the permeability coefficients, the intestinal absorption capacity of the typical compounds was elevated from the levels of 10⁻⁷ cm/s to 10⁻⁵ cm/s from those of the original compounds in TMF. Among them the main isoflavone glycosides puerarin (4), mirificin (6) and daidzin (7) were transformed into the same aglycone, daidzein (10). Therefore it was predicted that the aglycone compounds might be the real active ingredients in TMF. The models used can represent a novel path for the TCM studies.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.