Hinokinin, an Emerging Bioactive Lignan

Marcotullio, Maria Carla; Pelosi, Azzurra; Curini, Massimo

Immunosuppressive activity can play an important role in managing and resolving inflammation. Regarding the immunosuppressive activity of hinokinin (1), it has no activity against NFAT transcription factor [80] , but it was found active in the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced cytokine production assay for IL-10, IL-12, and TNF-α [81] and remarkably active in a lymphocyte transformation assay [82] (Table 2) . Recently, Desal et al. studied the anti-inflammatory effects of hinokinin against IL-6 and TNF-α, establishing that 1 exerts its anti-inflammatory effects via an NFκB-dependent mechanism [83] . Lima et al. evaluated the anti-inflammatory and analgesic activities of bark crude dichloromethane extract (BCED) of Z. riedelianum [84] . They found that BCED was able to reduce carrageenan-induced rat paw oedema after 4 h at the dose 100 mg/Kg (% inhibition: 57.4; indometacin 43.2% at 10 mg/Kg). One of the components of the active extract was hinokinin. The authors suggested that the extract could display anti-inflammatory activity associated with COX inhibition. Moreover, BCED displayed a central analgesic activity too.