Chemical Constituents and an Antineuroinflammatory Lignan, Savinin from the Roots of Acanthopanax henryi

Li, Xiao-Jun; Kim, Kwan-Woo; Oh, Hyuncheol; Liu, Xiang-Qian; Kim, Youn-Chul

Acanthopanax spp. is one of the well-known medicinal resources in traditional oriental medicine in China, Korea, Japan, and far-east Russia. Its dried roots and stem barks are famous traditional folk medicine for treating rheumatism, arthritis, paralysis, sinew, and bone pain [5] . Acanthopanax henryi (Oliv.) Harms, a Chinese endemic plant, has been used as a traditional remedy for the treatment of paralysis, arthritis, rheumatism, lameness, edema, injury from falls, hernia, and abdominal pain [6, 7] . Previous phytochemical studies 2 Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine on A. henryi led to the isolation and identification of more than 30 secondary metabolites, including five flavonoids, six caffeoylquinic acid derivatives [6] , sixteen triterpenoid saponins [8, 9] , one amide, one anthraquinone, one organic acid [9] , three lignans, one diterpene, one phenylpropanoid, and two phytosterols [10] . In addition, it has been reported that this plant exhibits diverse pharmacological activities due to the wide variety of chemical constituents. For example, metabolites of the leaves of A. henryi have strong antioxidant and antiacetyl cholinesterase activities [6] , and the 80% methanol fraction of root bark and ciwujianoside C3, which was isolated from leaves of this plant, have significant antiinflammatory effect in lipopolysaccharide-(LPS-) induced RAW264.7 macrophage cells [5, 11] . Moreover, some glycosides from the leaves of A. henryi have antiadipogenic effect, decreasing lipid accumulation through the inhibition of proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR ) and CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha (C/EBP ) in 3T3-L1 cells [12] . However, it has not been investigated yet whether this plant has antineuroinflammatory effects.