2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Molecular dissection of a medicinal herb and identification of target genes by oligonucleotide microarray
| Project/Area Number |
15590598
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
General internal medicine (including Psychosomatic medicine)
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| Research Institution | Yamaguchi University |
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Principal Investigator |
IIZUKA Norio Yamaguchi University, School of Medicine, Dept.Bioregulatory Function, Research Associate, 医学部, 寄附講座教員 (80332807)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2004
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| Keywords | DNA microarray / Herb / Fingerprint / Alkaroid / Pancreatic cancer |
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| Research Abstract |
Substances derived from plants, animals and other natural sources may be useful as medicinal drugs. Since ancient times, such natural substances have been applied to medical practice, albeit somewhat empirically. It is believed that use of natural substances in medical practice will increase. However, most herbal medicines are complex mixtures of a variety of known and unknown constituents. Therefore, it remains unclear how a single molecule in a complex herbal medicines exerts a biological effect and interacts with other molecules. Thus, it is difficult to understand precisely the physiological actions of herbs because they contain a complex array of constituent molecules.
In this study we used DNA microarray data for 12600 genes to examine the anti-proliferative activity of the herb Coptidis rhizoma and eight constituent molecules against eight human pancreatic cancer cell lines. We identified 27 genes showing strong correlation with the 50% inhibitory dose (ID50) of C. rhizoma after 72-h exposure. Hierarchical cluster analysis with correlation coefficients between expression levels of these 27C. rhizoma-related genes and the ID50 of each constituent molecule classified these test molecules into two clusters, one consisting of C. rhizoma and berberine and the other consisting of the remaining seven molecules. Our results suggest that one molecule, berberine, can account for the majority of the anti-proliferative activity of C. rhizoma and that DNA microarray analyses can be used to improve our understanding of the actions of an intact herb.
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