New progress in nutmeg research by the interdisciplinary team of natural pharmaceutical chemistry of Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Traditional Chinese medicine Cardamom is a kind of dried seed of cardamom family It is pungent, bitter and warm It has the functions of appetizing, relieving diarrhea, relieving alcohol and protecting liver Nutmeg has long been used in the treatment of gastrointestinal diseases, and it is also used as a spice in western countries According to the investigation of the food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, nearly 9000 tons of nutmeg are consumed in the world every year It is beneficial to expand the application of nutmeg to fully study its biological activity Dr Yang Xiaonan of the natural medicine chemistry front cross team of Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences found that nutmeg can prevent thioacetamide induced liver injury by restoring lipid metabolites in mice, improving the level of antioxidation and reducing the level of inflammation Liver injury induced by peroxisome proliferator activated receptor α (PPAR α) gene knockout mice confirmed that PPAR α mediates the liver protective effect of nutmeg The team also revealed that cardamom lignans, the main ingredient in cardamom, have a similar protective effect on liver damage The research was mainly carried out jointly with Professor Yang Xiuwei of Peking University and researcher Frank J Gonzalez of NIH in the United States under the joint funding of nsfc-nih This discovery broadened the understanding of nutmeg activity The above results were published in Journal of proteome research (2018, 17, 1887-1897) with "PPAR α mediates the therapeutic effects of nutmeg", and in Newsweek in May 2018 with the theme of "nutmeg's hidden power: helping the liver" selected by ACS In addition, Dr Yang Xiaonan and Ms Lu Qianqian from the interdisciplinary team of natural medicine chemistry also carried out the metabolism research of two characteristic and active components of cardamom, namely, MRL and ddie The metabonomics method based on uplc-esi-qtofms was used to identify 23 MRL metabolites, 19 of which were newly identified It was also found that hydroxylation and demethylation are the main metabolic pathways of MRL, and CYP3A4 and CYP3A5 are the main enzymes involved in MRL metabolism (RSC advantages, DOI: 10.1039 / c7ra06189g) Demethylation and ring opening reaction are the main pathway of metabolism of ddie, CYP1A1 is the main enzyme which is helpful to the formation of metabolites of ddie It was also found that after exposure to ddie, the contents of two endogenous metabolites in mice urine, 2,8-dihydroxyquinoline and its glucuronide conjugate, increased significantly, indicating the regulatory effect of ddie on intestinal microflora (Journal of pharmaceutical and biological analysis, 2017, 725-733) The above study revealed the metabolic profiles of two representative active components in cardamom, which is helpful to understand the metabolic characteristics and drug-forming properties of 8-o-4 'and benzofuran Neolignans, and lay a foundation for further discovery of the leading compounds in cardamom The above research was supported by NSFC project (81161120429), national key R & D plan project (2017yfc0906903), Central Organization Department thousand talents plan and Yunnan postdoctoral research fund