107
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Pharmacogenomics and the Yin/Yang actions of ginseng: anti-tumor, angiomodulating and steroid-like activities of ginsenosides

      review-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          In Chinese medicine, ginseng (Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer) has long been used as a general tonic or an adaptogen to promote longevity and enhance bodily functions. It has also been claimed to be effective in combating stress, fatigue, oxidants, cancer and diabetes mellitus. Most of the pharmacological actions of ginseng are attributed to one type of its constituents, namely the ginsenosides. In this review, we focus on the recent advances in the study of ginsenosides on angiogenesis which is related to many pathological conditions including tumor progression and cardiovascular dysfunctions.

          Angiogenesis in the human body is regulated by two sets of counteracting factors, angiogenic stimulators and inhibitors. The 'Yin and Yang' action of ginseng on angiomodulation was paralleled by the experimental data showing angiogenesis was indeed related to the compositional ratio between ginsenosides Rg 1 and Rb 1. Rg 1 was later found to stimulate angiogenesis through augmenting the production of nitric oxide (NO) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Mechanistic studies revealed that such responses were mediated through the PI3K→Akt pathway. By means of DNA microarray, a group of genes related to cell adhesion, migration and cytoskeleton were found to be up-regulated in endothelial cells. These gene products may interact in a hierarchical cascade pattern to modulate cell architectural dynamics which is concomitant to the observed phenomena in angiogenesis. By contrast, the anti-tumor and anti-angiogenic effects of ginsenosides (e.g. Rg 3 and Rh 2) have been demonstrated in various models of tumor and endothelial cells, indicating that ginsenosides with opposing activities are present in ginseng. Ginsenosides and Panax ginseng extracts have been shown to exert protective effects on vascular dysfunctions, such as hypertension, atherosclerotic disorders and ischemic injury. Recent work has demonstrates the target molecules of ginsenosides to be a group of nuclear steroid hormone receptors. These lines of evidence support that the interaction between ginsenosides and various nuclear steroid hormone receptors may explain the diverse pharmacological activities of ginseng. These findings may also lead to development of more efficacious ginseng-derived therapeutics for angiogenesis-related diseases.

          Related collections

          Most cited references179

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Angiogenesis in life, disease and medicine.

          The growth of blood vessels (a process known as angiogenesis) is essential for organ growth and repair. An imbalance in this process contributes to numerous malignant, inflammatory, ischaemic, infectious and immune disorders. Recently, the first anti-angiogenic agents have been approved for the treatment of cancer and blindness. Angiogenesis research will probably change the face of medicine in the next decades, with more than 500 million people worldwide predicted to benefit from pro- or anti-angiogenesis treatments.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Angiogenesis in cancer, vascular, rheumatoid and other disease.

            J Folkman (1995)
            Recent discoveries of endogenous negative regulators of angiogenesis, thrombospondin, angiostatin and glioma-derived angiogenesis inhibitory factor, all associated with neovascularized tumours, suggest a new paradigm of tumorigenesis. It is now helpful to think of the switch to the angiogenic phenotype as a net balance of positive and negative regulators of blood vessel growth. The extent to which the negative regulators are decreased during this switch may dictate whether a primary tumour grows rapidly or slowly and whether metastases grow at all.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              The small GTP-binding protein rho regulates the assembly of focal adhesions and actin stress fibers in response to growth factors.

              Actin stress fibers are one of the major cytoskeletal structures in fibroblasts and are linked to the plasma membrane at focal adhesions. rho, a ras-related GTP-binding protein, rapidly stimulated stress fiber and focal adhesion formation when microinjected into serum-starved Swiss 3T3 cells. Readdition of serum produced a similar response, detectable within 2 min. This activity was due to a lysophospholipid, most likely lysophosphatidic acid, bound to serum albumin. Other growth factors including PDGF induced actin reorganization initially to form membrane ruffles, and later, after 5 to 10 min, stress fibers. For all growth factors tested the stimulation of focal adhesion and stress fiber assembly was inhibited when endogenous rho function was blocked, whereas membrane ruffling was unaffected. These data imply that rho is essential specifically for the coordinated assembly of focal adhesions and stress fibers induced by growth factors.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Chin Med
                Chinese Medicine
                BioMed Central (London )
                1749-8546
                2007
                15 May 2007
                : 2
                : 6
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR, China
                [2 ]Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR, China
                [3 ]Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
                [4 ]Angiogenesis & TCM Laboratory, Department of Pharmacology, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, CB2 1PD, UK
                [5 ]International Society for Chinese Medicine, A & C, 1 st floor, Block 2, University of Macau, Av. Padre Tomas Pereira, Taipa, Macao SAR, China
                Article
                1749-8546-2-6
                10.1186/1749-8546-2-6
                1876803
                17502003
                8d456eb9-33a9-41e1-b5af-f8fdda64d1f1
                Copyright © 2007 Yue et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 29 November 2006
                : 15 May 2007
                Categories
                Review

                Complementary & Alternative medicine
                Complementary & Alternative medicine

                Comments

                Comment on this article