Anti-fibrotic effects of phenolic compounds on pancreatic stellate cells

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Siu Wai Tsang¹  Zhao-Xiang Bian¹  Lu-Cong Zheng¹  Hong-Jie Zhang¹  Zesi Lin² 

[1] School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, 3/F, SCM Building, 7 Baptist University Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR, China;School of Fundamental Medical Science, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China;

关键词: Rhein;    Emodin;    Curcumin;    Resveratrol;    Pancreatic stellate cells;    Pancreatic fibrosis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12906-015-0789-y

 received in 2015-04-08, accepted in 2015-07-21,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPancreatic fibrosis is a prominent histopathological characteristic of chronic pancreatitis and plausibly a dynamic process of transition to the development of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Conversely, the activation of pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) has been recently suggested as the key initiating step in pancreatic fibrosis. As natural polyphenols had been largely applied in complementary therapies in the past decade, in this study, we aimed to investigate which groups of phenolic compounds exert promising inhibitory actions on fibrogenesis as there are few effective strategies for the treatment of pancreatic fibrosis to date.MethodsWe examined the anti-fibrotic effects of a variety of herbal constituents using a cellular platform, the LTC-14 cells, which retained essential characteristics and morphologies of primary PSCs, by means of various biochemical assays including cell viability test, real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting analysis.ResultsAmong a number of commonly used herbal constituents, we found that the application of rhein, emodin, curcumin and resveratrol significantly suppressed the mRNA and protein levels of several fibrotic mediators namely alpha-smooth muscle actin, type I collagen and fibronectin in LTC-14 cells against transforming growth factor-beta stimulation. Though the values of cytotoxicity varied, the mechanism of the anti-fibrotic action of these four phenolic compounds was principally associated with a decrease in the activation of the nuclear factor-kappaB signaling pathway.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the mentioned phenolic compounds may serve as anti-fibrotic agents in PSC-relating disorders and pathologies, particularly pancreatic fibrosis.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Lin et al. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.