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Prof. Sun Handong.
A woody vine with clusters of tiny red berries:
wu-wei-zi may look ordinary plant to you, but the Chinese people have used its fruits as medicine for over 2,000 years. It is believed to have many pharmacological effects: tranquilizer, concentration-booster, and even a beauty agent that helps hold moisture in your skin. Scientists now bring to light another two of its magic spells. Believe it or not, with anti-HIV bioactivity and control over the neural system, this herb may combat some of the most elusive diseases of our modern society.
In the past decade, Prof. SUN Handong and colleagues have been exploring the kingdom of
wu-wei-zi -- or Schisandraceae -- in southwest China where over half of its total 50 species are distributed. At the State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Plant Resources in West China, CAS Kunming Institute of Botany, researchers carry out numerous experiments to analyze the chemical constituents and study their bioactivities.
For about a dozen species of Schisandraceae they have already examined, Prof. Sun and coworkers have separated and identified more than 700 compounds, one fourth of which were observed for the first time. A recent issue of Natural Products Report (NPR) recorded their original and diligent work on a class of organic chemicals from the Schisandraceae family called triterpenoids.
Sun's group analyzed these molecule structures and testified their bioactivities. To everyone's joy, several triterpenoid molecules were proved as effective inhibitors of the HIV-1 virus. For instance, back in 1996 the team isolated nigranoic acid, a triterpenoid from S. sphaerandra that showed activity in several anti-HIV reverse transcriptase and polymerase assays.
With support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the West Light Foundation of CAS and provincial grants, the team also uncovered over 80 highly-oxygenated triterpenoids endowed with different skeletons. The NPR review gave a detailed description and classification to these novel compounds. With unusual ring systems and rearranged structures, they may bring challenges to phytochemists, synthetic chemists, and pharmacologists, Prof. Sun says.
According to the professor, these newly-discovered triterpenoids can combine with some major pharmacological targets, such as β-secretase, to treat neurodegenerative diseases with the help of computer-aided drug screening. The research is a good example for natural chemists to reinvestigate some well-known medicinal herbs that were believed to be well studied, and to make breakthroughs with more admiring discoveries.
The laboratory is going to carry out similar studies on the rest of Schisandraceae species. It will also seek collaboration with other CAS institutes like the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and the Kunming Institute of Zoology for drug research and development, Sun notes.
Prof. Sun Handong, a CAS member and former director-general of the CAS Kunming Institute of Botany, got down to the study of the magic herb in the late 1990s. His decades-long studies on diterpenoids from Isodon species and their bioactivities, including the discovery of some 518 compounds, were reported by the NPR in 2006.