Crocetin Isolated from the Natural Food Colorant Saffron Reduces Intracellular Fat in 3T3-L1 Adipocytes

Saffron and its active constituents ameliorate hypercholesterolemia by inhibiting PCSK9 and modulating Sortilin, LDLR, and SREBP-2 signaling in high fat diet induced hypercholesterolemic C57BL/6 mice

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) has long been used in Ayurveda, Iranian, and Chinese traditional medicine as a natural remedy for hypercholesterolemia, obesity, and liver disorders though its therapeutic mechanism remains unclear.

AIM OF THE STUDY

This study explores the mechanism by which saffron extract (SE), crocin (CN), and crocetin (CR) mitigate high fat diet (HFD) induced hypercholesterolemia and hepatic inflammation in C57BL/6 mice, focusing on their inhibition of proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

C57BL/6 mice (N = 10/group) were fed either a, normal diet, HFD, or HFD supplemented with SE, CN, CR, or atorvastatin for 12 weeks. Plasma lipids and inflammatory markers were measured. Histopathological changes were assessed via H&E and Sudan black staining. Gene expression was analyzed using qRT-PCR, and ligand-protein interactions were studied using molecular docking, simulation, and thermophoresis.

RESULTS

HFD-fed mice exhibited dyslipidemia, liver damage, and inflammation, which SE, CN, and CR significantly improved. Treatments reduced cholesterol, triglycerides, and reactive oxygen species, reversed fatty liver degeneration, and downregulated PCSK9 and sortilin expression while upregulating LDLR. They suppressed transcription factors SREBP-1C and SREBP-2 and reduced inflammatory markers, including TNF-α, while increasing IL-10 expression. CR reduced plasma PCSK9 secretion by 39.9 % (p < 0.05). Docking and simulation studies confirmed the strong binding potential of CR and CN to PCSK9.

CONCLUSION

Saffron and its active components (CN and CR) are novel natural PCSK9 inhibitors that effectively ameliorate hypercholesterolemia by modulating sortilin, LDLR and SREBP-2 pathway, potentially opening the way for developing new therapeutic approaches for managing cholesterol related disorders.

Effect of Crocetin on Basal Lipolysis in 3T3-L1 Adipocytes

Crocetin (CCT) is a natural saffron-derived apocarotenoid that possesses healthy properties such as anti-adipogenic, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant activities. Lipolysis is enhanced in obesity and correlates with a pro-inflammatory, pro-oxidant state. In this context, we aimed to investigate whether CCT affects lipolysis. To evaluate CCT's possible lipolytic effect, 3T3-L1 adipocytes were treated with CCT10μM at day 5 post-differentiation. Glycerol content and antioxidant activity were assessed using colorimetric assays. Gene expression was measured using qRT-PCR to evaluate the effect of CCT on key lipolytic enzymes and on nitric oxide synthase (NOS) expression. Total lipid accumulation was assessed using Oil Red O staining. CCT10μM decreased glycerol release from 3T3-L1 adipocytes and downregulated adipose tissue triglyceride lipase (ATGL) and perilipin-1, but not hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL), suggesting an anti-lipolytic effect. CCT increased catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, thus showing an antioxidant effect. In addition, CCT exhibited an anti-inflammatory profile, i.e., diminished inducible NOS (NOS2) and resistin expression, while enhanced the expression of adiponectin. CCT10μM also decreased intracellular fat and C/EBPα expression (a transcription factor involved in adipogenesis), thus revealing an anti-adipogenic effect. These findings point to CCT as a promising biocompound for improving lipid mobilisation in obesity.

Biocolorants in food: Sources, extraction, applications and future prospects

Color of a food is one of the major factors influencing its acceptance by consumers. At presently synthetic dyes are the most commonly used food colorant in food industry by providing more esthetically appearance and as a means to quality control. However, the growing concern about health and environmental due to associated toxicity with synthetic food colorants has accelerated the global efforts to replace them with safer and healthy food colorants obtained from natural resources (plants, microorganisms, and animals). Further, many of these biocolorants not only provide myriad of colors to the food but also exert biological properties, thus they can be used as nutraceuticals in foods and beverages. In order to understand the importance of nature-derived pigments as food colorants, this review provides a thorough discussion on the natural origin of food colorants. Following this, different extraction methods for isolating biocolorants from plants and microbes were also discussed. Many of these biocolorants not only provide color, but also have many health promoting properties, for this reason their physicochemical and biological properties were also reviewed. Finally, current trends on the use of biocolorants in foods, and the challenges faced by the biocolorants in their effective utilization by food industry and possible solutions to these challenges were discussed.

Evaluation of toxicological safety and quality control of Luobufukebiri pill

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

The Luobufukebiri pill is one of the characteristic medicines of Uygur nationality in Xinjiang. It has the effect of warming and tonifying the brain and kidney, benefiting the heart and filling the essential functions, mainly used to treat impotence, depression, spermatorrhea, premature ejaculation, bodily weakness, emaciation, and neurasthenia.

AIM OF THE STUDY

This study evaluated the toxicology and developed a quality control protocol of Luobufukebiri pill to ensure its safety and effectiveness in clinical applications.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Acute toxicity in mice was studied by the maximum-dose method, and the toxic reactions in mice were observed within two weeks. In the study of Sub-chronic toxicity, SD rats were randomized into four groups: three drug groups which were treated with 8.00, 2.67, and 0.80 g/kg of Luobufukebiri pill, respectively, and one control group which was treated with the same volume of distilled water. Subsequently, at 30 days of medication and 30 days of drug withdrawal, the hematologic indexes, biochemical indexes, organ coefficient, and pathological sections of main organs were detected, respectively. According to the prescription, the contents of 8 active components in the pill were quantified simultaneously. The chromatographic conditions were as follows: Stepwise gradient elution was carried out using 0.1% formic acid (solvent A) and acetonitrile (solvent B), 0-8 min, 80% → 60% B; 8-25 min, 60% → 25%B. The flow rate was 1.0 mL/min, the column was maintained at 25 °C, and the injected sample volume was 10 μL.

RESULTS

The acute toxicity experiment documented a large dose of Luobufukebiri pill had no significant effect on organ and body weight and did not cause apparent damage to parenchymal organs. At Sub-chronic toxicity, the behavior of rats was as normal as the control group. There were some differences in hematologic indexes, serum biochemical indexes, and organ coefficient tests between the drug and control groups, but they had no toxic significance. No obvious pathological changes were observed in the pathological sections of major organs. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the clinical dose of Luobufukebiri pill was far less than its toxic dose, and it had reliable safety. The contents of eight index components of Luobufukebiri pill were measured. All calibration curves exhibited good linearity with correlation coefficients better than 0.9997. The relative standard deviations of precision, reproducibility, stability, and recovery were less than 2.0%, demonstrating the stability and reliability of the method.

CONCLUSIONS

This study further confirmed the safety of Luobufukebiri pill in clinical practice. A rapid, accurate, and convenient RP-HPLC-PDA detection method has been developed for the simultaneous detection of eight active compounds in the pharmaceutical samples of Luobufukebiri pill. This study provided a reference for the safety and enhancement of the quality standards of Luobufukebiri pill.

Inhibitory effect of saffron, crocin, crocetin, and safranal against adipocyte differentiation in human adipose-derived stem cells

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) has been introduced as a potential promising natural antioxidant with anti-obesity properties. In Persian Medicine, saffron has been used to control appetite and obesity.

AIM OF THE STUDY

The present study aims to investigate the effect of saffron and its bioactive compounds on adipocyte differentiation in human adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Flow-Cytometric analysis was performed to quantify the cell surface markers. The extracts cytotoxicity on hASCs was measured using alamarBlue® assay whereas their activities against adipocyte differentiation were studied using Oil Red O staining. The level of Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ), Fatty Acid Synthetase (FAS), and Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPHD) which are key proteins in cell differentiation was investigated by western blot analysis.

RESULTS

Flow-cytometry revealed the mesenchymal stem cells markers, CD44 and CD90, on ADSCs surface. The saffron, crocin, and crocetin significantly inhibited adipocyte differentiation while saffron up to 20 μg/mL and crocin, crocetin and safranal up to 20 μM did not exhibit cytotoxicity. The western blotting analysis revealed a remarkable reduction in the level of PPARγ, GAPDH, and FAS proteins by 10 and 20 μM of crocin and 2.5 and 5 μM of crocetin.

CONCLUSION

It seems that saffron, crocin, and crocetin could efficiently inhibit the differentiation of hASCs with benefits for the treatment and prevention of obesity.

Food Innovation as a Means of Developing Healthier and More Sustainable Foods

The current demand for healthy and sustainable foods has encouraged the development of new alternatives even in traditional products. Improved foods may be produced by reducing the amount of some ingredients, adding new ones, or replacing traditionally used ingredients for others. By reformulating their products, manufacturers can offer healthier choices for an ever-growing number of consumers interested in maintaining a balanced diet. In addition, the market demand for more sustainable foods contributes to a lower environmental impact in their production. In this regard, current areas of interest include the production of foods using a lower number of inputs, as well as the utilization of food by-products, to improve the amount and quality of available foods. Another aspect to be considered is that not all consumers are willing to eat foods produced with new ingredients or novel technologies. Hence, the development of innovations in food products should take into account the influence of so-called “consumer food neophobia”.

Pathogenic Microenvironment from Diabetic-Obese Visceral and Subcutaneous Adipocytes Activating Differentiation of Human Healthy Preadipocytes Increases Intracellular Fat, Effect of the Apocarotenoid Crocetin

In diabetes mellitus type 2 (DM2), developed obesity is referred to as diabesity. Implementation of a healthy diet, such as the Mediterranean, prevents diabesity. Saffron is frequently used in this diet because of its bioactive components, such as crocetin (CCT), exhibit healthful properties. It is well known that obesity, defined as an excessive accumulation of fat, leads to cardiometabolic pathology through adiposopathy or hypertrophic growth of adipose tissue (AT).This is related to an impaired adipogenic process or death of adipocytes by obesogenic signals. We aimed to evaluate the effect of the pathogenic microenvironment and CCT, activating differentiation of healthy preadipocytes (PA). For this, we used human cryopreserved PA from visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) depots obtained from healthy and obese-DM2 donors. We studied the effect of a metabolically detrimental (diabesogenic) environment, generated by obese-DM2 adipocytes from VAT (VdDM) or SAT (SdDM), on the viability and accumulation of intracellular fat of adipocytes differentiated from healthy PA, in the presence or absence of CCT (1 or 10 μM). Intracellular fat was quantified by Oil Red O staining. Cytotoxicity was measured using the MTT assay. Our results showed that diabesogenic conditions induce cytotoxicity and provide a proadipogenic environment only for visceral PA. CCT at 10 μM acted as an antiadipogenic and cytoprotective compound.