Discovery of novel isoliquiritigenin analogue ISL-17 as a potential anti-gastric cancer agent

An insight into the therapeutic effects of isoliquiritigenin in breast cancer

Breast cancer ranks as the most widespread malignant condition in women, emerging as a primary contributor to mortality. The primary challenges in cancer treatments involve undesirable side effects. Therefore, exploring natural compounds as additional therapy could provide valuable insights. Isoliquiritigenin (ILN), an isoflavonoid featuring a chalcone moiety primarily sourced from Glycyrrhiza species, has garnered increasing interest in breast cancer research. This review aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of ILN's mechanisms of action in breast cancer, drawing from a range of in vitro and in vivo studies. ILN primarily acts by inhibiting angiogenesis, aromatase, inflammation, and cell proliferation, and preventing invasion and metastasis. Mechanistically, it downregulates miR-374a, phosphoinositide-3-kinase-protein kinase B/Akt, maternal embryonic leucine zipper kinase, vascular endothelial growth factor, and estrogen receptor protein levels, and causes enhancement of Wnt inhibitory factor-1, and Unc-51-like kinase 1 expression to treat breast cancer. ILN emerges as a promising natural option, offering therapeutic advantages with minimal side effects. However, it is important to note that current research on ILN is primarily limited to preclinical models, underscoring the need for further investigation to validate its potential efficacy.

The Potential of Glycyrrhiza from "Medicine Food Homology" in the Fight against Digestive System Tumors

Glycyrrhiza has a long history of applications and a wide range of pharmacological effects. It is known as the "king of all herbs". Glycyrrhiza is effective in clearing heat, detoxifying, relieving cough, and tonifying qi and has good bioactivity in multiple inflammatory, immune, and tumor diseases. This review aims to summarize the origin, distribution, and anti-digestive system tumor mechanism of glycyrrhiza and its homologous applications in medicine and food. The active compounds include triterpenoids, flavonoids, and coumarins, which are widely used in clinical treatments, disease prevention, and daily foods because of their "enhancement of efficacy" and "reduction of toxicity" against digestive system tumors. This paper reviews the use of glycyrrhiza in digestive system tumors and provides an outlook on future research and clinical applications.

Molecular modeling, dynamic simulation, and metabolic reactivity studies of quinazoline derivatives to investigate their anti-angiogenic potential by targeting wild EGFRwt and mutant EGFRT790M receptor tyrosine kinases

Non-small cell lung cancer, head and neck cancer, glioblastoma, and various other cancer types often demonstrate persistent elevation in EGFR tyrosine kinase activity due to acquired mutations in its kinase domain. Any alteration in the EGFR is responsible for triggering the upregulation of tumor angiogenic pathways, such as the PI3k-AKT-mTOR pathway, MAPK-ERK pathway and PLC-Ƴ pathway, which are critically involved in promoting tumor angiogenesis in cancer cells. The emergence of frequently occurring EGFR kinase domain mutations (L858R/T790M/C797S) that confer resistance to approved therapeutic agents has presented a significant challenge for researchers aiming to develop effective and well-tolerated treatments against tumor angiogenesis. In this study, we directed our efforts towards the rational design and development of novel quinazoline derivatives with the potential to act as antagonists against both wild-type and mutant EGFR. Our approach encompasing the application of advanced drug design strategies, including structure-based virtual screening, molecular docking, molecular dynamics, metabolic reactivity and cardiotoxicity prediction studies led to the identification of two prominent lead compounds: QU648, for EGFRwt inhibition and QU351, for EGFRmt antagonism. The computed binding energies of selected leads and their molecular dynamics simulations exhibited enhanced conformational stability of QU648 and QU351 when compared to standard drugs Erlotinib and Afatinib. Notably, the lead compounds also demonstrated promising pharmacokinetic properties, metabolic reactivity, and cardiotoxicity profiles. Collectively, the outcomes of our study provide compelling evidence supporting the potential of QU648 and QU351 as prominent anti-angiogenic agents, effectively inhibiting EGFR activity across various cancer types harboring diverse EGFR mutations.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

Design, synthesis and anti-Tb evaluation of chalcone derivatives as novel inhibitors of InhA

A series of halogenated chalcone derivatives were designed and developed for anti-tubercular activity. Novel molecules were designed and in-silico screening were performed using admetSAR, SwissADME, and Osiris Property Explorer. From the initial filter the top 10 compounds were docked using the Autodock tool 1.5.6. and the binding energies of the docked compounds were higher than the standard drugs Isoniazid.and Ethionamide. Based on the in-silico and docking results, the top halogenated chalcones were synthesized and characterized using FT-IR, mass spectrometry, 1H, and 13C NMR spectroscopy. The chalcones were further evaluated for anti-tubercular activity using MABA against the H37Rv strain. Among the series of compounds, DK12 and DK14 showed potent in-vitro activity, with MICs of 0.8 µg/ml, in comparison with 1.6 µg/ml of the first-line drug Isoniazid. Further molecular dynamics simulations studies for 100 ns revealed that the key interaction with TYR 158 were observed in both DK12 and DK14 in the InhA active site. The compound DK12 further showed significant interactions with PHE 149 and ARG 153 residues and is a hit molecule among the series. Further DK12 and DK14 does not show any significance toxicity. The compounds DK12 needs to be optimized and further investigation to be carried out against InhA.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma: The popular occurrence of herbal medicine applied in classical prescriptions

Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma is a well-known herbal medicine with a wide range of pharmacological functions that has been used throughout Chinese history. This review presents a comprehensive introduction to this herb and its classical prescriptions. The article discusses the resources and distribution of species, methods of authentication and determination chemical composition, quality control of the original plants and herbal medicines, dosages use, common classical prescriptions, indications, and relevant mechanisms of the active content. Pharmacokinetic parameters, toxicity tests, clinical trials, and patent applications are discussed. The review will provide a good starting point for the research and development of classical prescriptions to develop herbal medicines for clinical use.

Chalcones and Gastrointestinal Cancers: Experimental Evidence

Colorectal (CRC) and gastric cancers (GC) are the most common digestive tract cancers with a high incidence rate worldwide. The current treatment including surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy has several limitations such as drug toxicity, cancer recurrence or drug resistance and thus it is a great challenge to discover an effective and safe therapy for CRC and GC. In the last decade, numerous phytochemicals and their synthetic analogs have attracted attention due to their anticancer effect and low organ toxicity. Chalcones, plant-derived polyphenols, received marked attention due to their biological activities as well as for relatively easy structural manipulation and synthesis of new chalcone derivatives. In this study, we discuss the mechanisms by which chalcones in both in vitro and in vivo conditions suppress cancer cell proliferation or cancer formation.

Chinese herbal medicine combined with oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy for advanced gastric cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis of contributions of specific medicinal materials to tumor response

Introduction: The incidence and mortality of gastric cancer ranks among the highest, and the 5-year survival rate of advanced gastric cancer (AGC) is less than 10%. Currently, chemotherapy is the main treatment for AGC, and oxaliplatin is an important part of the commonly used chemotherapy regimen for AGC. A large number of RCTs have shown that Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) combined with oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy can improve objective response rate (ORR) and disease control rate (DCR), reduce the toxic and side effects of chemotherapy. There is currently a lack of systematic evaluation of the evidence to account for the efficacy and safety of CHM combined with oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy in AGC. Therefore, we carried out this study and conducted the sensitivity analysis on the herbal composition to explore the potential anti-tumor efficacy. Methods: Databases of PubMed, EMBASE, CENTRAL, Web of Science, the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, the Wanfang database, and the Chinese Scientific Journals Database were searched from their inception to April 2022. RCTs evaluating the efficacy of CHM combined with oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy on AGC were included. Stata 16 was used for data synthesis, RoB 2 for quality evaluation of included RCTs, and GRADE for quality of synthesized evidence. Additional sensitivity analysis was performed to explore the potential anti-tumor effects of single herbs and combination of herbs. Results: Forty trials involving 3,029 participants were included. Most included RCTs were assessed as "Some concerns" of risk of bias. Meta-analyses showed that compare to oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy alone, that CHM combined with oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy could increase the objective response rate (ORR) by 35% [risk ratio (RR) = 1.35, 95% confidence intervals (CI) (1.25, 1.45)], and disease control rate (DCR) by 12% [RR = 1.12, 95% CI (1.08, 1.16)]. Subgroup analysis showed that compare to SOX, FOLFOX, and XELOX regimens alone, CHM plus SOX, CHM plus FOLFOX, and CHM plus XELOX could significantly increase the ORR and DCR. Sensitivity analysis identified seven herbs of Astragalus, Liquorice, Poria, Largehead Atractylodes, Chinese Angelica, Codonopsis, and Tangerine Peel with potentials to improve tumor response of oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy in AGC. Conclusion: Synthesized evidence showed moderate certainty that CHM plus oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy may promote improvement in tumor response in AGC. CHM treatment is safe for AGC. Due to the poor quality of included RCTs and small samplesizes, the quality of synthesized evidence was not high. Specific combinations of herbs appeared to produce higher contributions to ORR than the herb individually. Each of this seven above mentioned herbs has been shown in experimental studies to potentially contribute to the improvement of tumor response. To support this conclusion, these seven herbs are worthy of further clinical research. Systematic Review Registration: [http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=262595], identifier [CRD42022262595].

Perspectives on the Role of Isoliquiritigenin in Cancer

Isoliquiritigenin (2',4',4-trihydroxychalcone, ISL), one of the most important bioactive compounds with a chalcone structure, is derived from licorice root. Licorice is commonly known as Glycyrrhiza, including Glycyrrhiza uralensis, Glycyrrhiza radix, and Glycyrrhiza glabra, which are generally available in common foods and Chinese herbal medicines based on a wide variety of biological functions and pharmacological effects, and its derivative (ISL) is utilized as a food additive and adjunct disease treatment. In this review, we summarized the progress over the last 10 years in the targeted pathways and molecular mechanisms of ISL that are involved in the regulation of the onset and progression of different types of cancers.