Astragali Radix (AR), a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), has demonstrated therapeutic efficacy against various diseases, including cardiovascular conditions, over centuries of use. While doxorubicin serves as an effective chemotherapeutic agent against multiple cancers, its clinical application remains constrained by significant cardiotoxicity. Research has indicated that AR exhibits protective properties against doxorubicin-induced cardiomyopathy (DIC); however, the specific bioactive components and underlying mechanisms responsible for this therapeutic effect remain incompletely understood. This investigation seeks to identify the protective bioactive components in AR against DIC and elucidate their mechanisms of action. Through network medicine analysis, astragaloside IV (AsIV) and formononetin (FMT) were identified as potential cardioprotective agents from 129 AR components. In vitro experiments using H9c2 rat cardiomyocytes revealed that the AsIV-FMT combination (AFC) effectively reduced doxorubicin-induced cell death in a dose-dependent manner, with optimal efficacy at a 1∶2 ratio. In vivo, AFC enhanced survival rates and improved cardiac function in both acute and chronic DIC mouse models. Additionally, AFC demonstrated cardiac protection while maintaining doxorubicin's anti-cancer efficacy in a breast cancer mouse model. Lipidomic and metabolomics analyses revealed that AFC normalized doxorubicin-induced lipid profile alterations, particularly by reducing fatty acid accumulation. Gene knockdown studies and inhibitor experiments in H9c2 cells demonstrated that AsIV and FMT upregulated peroxisome proliferator activated receptor γ coactivator 1α (PGC-1α) and PPARα, respectively, two key proteins involved in fatty acid metabolism. This research establishes AFC as a promising therapeutic approach for DIC, highlighting the significance of multi-target therapies derived from natural herbals in contemporary medicine.
Animals ; Doxorubicin/adverse effects* ; Saponins/administration & dosage* ; Isoflavones/pharmacology* ; Rats ; Cardiomyopathies/prevention & control* ; Mice ; Fatty Acids/metabolism* ; Myocytes, Cardiac/metabolism* ; Triterpenes/administration & dosage* ; Male ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal/administration & dosage* ; Humans ; Cardiotonic Agents/administration & dosage* ; Mice, Inbred C57BL ; Cell Line ; Astragalus Plant/chemistry* ; Astragalus propinquus

Fatty acid metabolism, including fatty acid oxidation (FAO) and fatty acid synthesis, plays critical roles in signal transduction, energy production and inflammation regulation.Acute kidney injury (AKI), chronic kidney disease (CKD) and renal cell carcinoma (RCC) are typical renal diseases with complex pathogenesis, susceptibility to multiple complications, and still no effective measure for clinical intervention.Current studies reveal that fatty acid metabolism is closely related to the occurrence and development of a variety of kidney diseases.This article reviews the metabolic characteristics of fatty acid in the kidney, the relationship between fatty acid metabolism disorder and renal diseases (i.e., AKI, CKD and RCC), and summarizes traditional Chinese medicines and related active ingredients targeting fatty acid metabolic pathway to alleviate renal diseases, aiming to provide theoretical reference for the in-depth study of mechanisms related to fatty acid metabolism in renal diseases as well as the development of effective interventions.

China Pharmaceutical University proposed and established the first second-level discipline of pharmaceutical pedagogy in China under the first-level discipline of pharmacy in 2021.Through exploring the value of pharmaceutical pedagogy and clarifying its connotation and development path, the construction of the discipline will be firmly pushed forward with a good start, laying a solid foundation for the connotative and high-quality development of pharmaceutical education in China.Using comparison, literature review and historical survey, iconic discipline factors in similar disciplines of pharmaceutical pedagogy, like medical pedagogy, nursing pedagogy, health education and social & administrative pharmacy were investigated.Our researches showed that pharmaceutical pedagogy in its narrow sense refers to the discipline of studying the phenomena and problems of pharmaceutical education with the cultivation of pharmaceutical talents as the core, and revealing the laws and characteristics of pharmaceutical education.The construction of pharmaceutical pedagogy should be further promoted with more academic achievements, stronger academic teams, organizations and journals with better and higher platforms of academic research.It was suggested that pharmaceutical pedagogy should be guided by Marxist philosophy in improving its academic system, academic institutions, academic teams and ability in participating in academic governance independently and openly.Pharmaceutical pedagogy is expected to accelerate the construction of theoretical system and discourse system of pharmaceutical education with Chinese characteristics, aiming to provide stronger intellectual support and knowledge contribution for pharmaceutical education in China and for China.

The changes of metabolic profile are closely related to external stimulus, and the concentration of the metabolite can directly reflect the physiological or pathological states of organisms. Therefore, the quantitative detection of metabolites is necessary. However, traditional targeted metabolomic methods have such drawbacks as narrow coverage and low sensitivity. In recent years, derivatization techniques have developed rapidly in the field of metabolomics. Derivatization reagents for amine, hydroxyl, carboxyl, carbonyl, hydrosulphonyl and other groups have been used in metabolomics research. This paper introduces various derivatization reactions and their applications according to group classification and reviewes the characteristics of multi-group derivatization techniques, with a propect of their research directions and challenges.

Intestinal toxicity induced by chemotherapeutics has become an important reason for the interruption of therapy and withdrawal of approved agents. In this study, we demonstrated that chemotherapeutics-induced intestinal damage were commonly characterized by the sharp upregulation of tryptophan (Trp)-kynurenine (KYN)-kynurenic acid (KA) axis metabolism. Mechanistically, chemotherapy-induced intestinal damage triggered the formation of an interleukin-6 (IL-6)-indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1)-aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) positive feedback loop, which accelerated kynurenine pathway metabolism in gut. Besides, AHR and G protein-coupled receptor 35 (GPR35) negative feedback regulates intestinal damage and inflammation to maintain intestinal integrity and homeostasis through gradually sensing kynurenic acid level in gut and macrophage, respectively. Moreover, based on virtual screening and biological verification, vardenafil and linagliptin as GPR35 and AHR agonists respectively were discovered from 2388 approved drugs. Importantly, the results that vardenafil and linagliptin significantly alleviated chemotherapy-induced intestinal toxicity

To investigate the regulatory effects of insulin and oleic acid on serum metabolites in colon cancer, subcutaneous transplantation tumor model of colon carcinoma cell HCT116 was established. Nude mice were randomly divided into 4 groups: control (CON, vehicle); insulin treatment (INS, sc, 2.5 U/kg); oleic acid treatment (OA, ig, 2.0 g/kg); and insulin (sc, 2.5 U/kg) plus oleic acid (ig, 2.0 g/kg) treatment (IO). Non-target metabolomic analysis on the blood samples was performed by GC/MS and LC-IT-TOF/MS. Data pre-processing, including peaking, spectral deconvolution and peak alignment, was performed before data were imported to SIMCA-P for multivariate statistical analysis. Results showed that body weight of individuals in IO group was the lowest, but the tumor weight was the heaviest. Metabolic profiles of IO group were also different compared with the CON group, and the contributing metabolites were urea, arabinose, cholesterol, L-acetylcarnitine and sphingosine. There was no significant difference between OA or INS and CON. This study showed that the combination of insulin and oleic acid promoted colon cancer deterioration and caused metabolic disturbance in blood.Our study may provide theoretical foundation for the discovery of colon cancer biomarker and its early diagnosis.

Astragali radix(AR,the dried root of Astragalus)is a popular herbal remedy in both China and the United States.The commercially available AR is commonly classified into premium graded(PG)and ungraded(UG)ones only according to the appearance.To uncover novel sensitive and specific markers for AR grading,we took the integrated mass spectrometry-based untargeted and targeted metabolomics ap-proaches to characterize chemical features of PG and UG samples in a discovery set(n=16 batches).A series of five differential compounds were screened out by univariate statistical analysis,including arginine,calycosin,ononin,formononetin,and astragaloside Ⅳ,most of which were observed to be accumulated in PG samples except for astragaloside Ⅳ.Then,we performed machine learning on the quantification data of five compounds and constructed a logistic regression prediction model.Finally,the external validation in an independent validation set of AR(n=20 batches)verified that the five com-pounds,as well as the model,had strong capability to distinguish the two grades of AR,with the pre-diction accuracy＞90％.Our findings present a panel of meaningful candidate markers that would significantly catalyze the innovation in AR grading.

Pharmacometabolomics has been already successfully used in toxicity prediction for one specific adverse effect. However in clinical practice, two or more different toxicities are always accompanied with each other, which puts forward new challenges for pharmacometabolomics. Gastrointestinal toxicity and myelosuppression are two major adverse effects induced by Irinotecan (CPT-11), and often show large individual differences. In the current study, a pharmacometabolomic study was performed to screen the exclusive biomarkers in predose serums which could predict late-onset diarrhea and myelosuppression of CPT-11 simultaneously. The severity and sensitivity differences in gastrointestinal toxicity and myelosuppression were judged by delayed-onset diarrhea symptoms, histopathology examination, relative cytokines and blood cell counts. Mass spectrometry-based non-targeted and targeted metabolomics were conducted in sequence to dissect metabolite signatures in predose serums. Eventually, two groups of metabolites were screened out as predictors for individual differences in late-onset diarrhea and myelosuppression using binary logistic regression, respectively. This result was compared with existing predictors and validated by another independent external validation set. Our study indicates the prediction of toxicity could be possible upon predose metabolic profile. Pharmacometabolomics can be a potentially useful tool for complicating toxicity prediction. Our findings also provide a new insight into CPT-11 precision medicine.

An acute myocardial infarction rat model was established by ligation of the left ventricular coronary artery.Plasma samples of rats were collected and analyzed by ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-QTOF/MS) to study the myocardial protection mechanism of compound Danshen dropping pill (CDDP).After principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), 22 metabolites were identified as potential biomarker of AMI.Furthermore, CDDP had remarkable effect on AMI rats.p-Tolyl sulfate, hippuric acid, equol 7-O-glucuronide, lysoPC(16∶0), cholic acid, oleamide, palmitic amide and SM(d18∶1/16∶0) were significantly changed in treatment group.The results showed that CDDP had a very good myocardial protection effect on AMI rats, and might influence the pathways of phenylalanine metabolism, glycerophospholipid metabolism, fatty acid metabolism, primary bile acid biosynthesis and Sphingolipid metabolism.

A colorimetric self-indicating probe for glucose was constructed by self-assembly of MnO2 nanosheets (MnO2 NSs) and glucose oxidase(GOD) in this paper.Under the weak acidic medium,glucose oxidase specifically catalyzes glucose into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide.The by-product of hydrogen peroxide could efficiently dissolve the MnO2 nanosheets,resulting into a significant decrease of the characteristic absorbance at 374 nm assigned to MnO2 NSs.Furthermore,the absorbance difference was linearly proportional to the concentration of glucose ranging from 1 to 20 μmol/L The fitted curve could be used for quantification of glucose with a correlation coefficient of 0.990 1.And the detection limit as low as 0.1 μmol/L could be reached based on the definition of three times of the deviation of the blank signal (3σ) and there was negligible interference with other co-existing amino acids,anions,cations and protein,which indicated high sensitivity and selectivity of the hybrid probe.The construction strategy of designated probe is readily generalized in principle for detection of numerous analytes in view of reactive property of MnO2 and the diversity of enzymes.