• Journal of Life Science
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.607-614
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• 2015

Cancers are the largest cause of mortality and morbidity all over the world. Cordycepin, an adenosine analog, is a major functional component of the Cordyceps species, which has been widely used in traditional Oriental medicine. Over the last decade, this compound has been reported to possess many pharmacological properties, such as an ability to enhance immune function, as well as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anti-cancer effects. Recently, numerous studies have reported interesting properties of cordycepin as a chemopreventive agent as well. There is an accumulating body of experimental evidences suggesting that cordycepin impedes cancer progression by promoting apoptosis, inducing cell cycle arrest, modulating intracellular signaling pathways, and inhibiting invasion and metastasis of cancer cells. In many cancer cell lines, cordycepin inhibits growth and cell cycle progression by inducing arrest of the G2/M phase, resulting from the inhibition of retinoblastoma protein phosphorylation and induction of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors. To induce apoptosis, cordycepin activates the extrinsic and intrinsic pathways, which promotes reactive oxygen species generation and the downstream activation of kinase cascades. Cordycepin also can activate alternative pathways to cell death such autophagy. In addition, cordycepin can inhibit the pro-metastatic processes of cancer cell detachment, migration, and invasion through a variety of mechanisms, including the nuclear factor-kappa B and activated protein-1 signaling pathways. In this review, we summarized the variety of action mechanisms by which cordycepin may mediate chemopreventive effects on cancer and discussed the potential of this natural product as a promising therapeutic inhibitor of cancer development.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.307-313
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• 2018

Alopecia cause psychological stress due to their effect on appearance. Thus, the global market size of the alopecia treatment products are growing quickly. Timosaponin A III is the well known active ingredient of Anemarrhenae Rhizoma. In this study, we investigated and compared the binding affinity of timosaponin A III with finasteride (5-beta reductase antagonist) and minoxidil (androgen receptor antagonist) on the target protein active site by in silico computational docking studies. The three dimensional crystallographic structure of 5-beta reductase (PDB ID : 3G1R) and androgen receptor (PDB ID: 4K7A) was obtained from PDB database. In silico computational autodocking analysis was performed using PyRx, Autodock Vina, Discovery Studio Version 4.5, and NX-QuickPharm option based on scoring functions. The timosaponin A III showed optimum binding affinity (docking energy) with 5-beta reductase as -12.20 kcal/mol as compared to the finasteride (-11.70 kcal/mol) and with androgen receptor as -9.00 kcal/mol as compared to the minoxidil (-7.40 kcal/mol). The centroid X, Y, Z grid position of the timosaponin A III on the 5-beta reductase was similar (overlap) to the finasteride, but the X, Y, Z centroid grid of the timosaponin A III on the androgen receptor was significantly far from the minoxidil centroid position. These results significantly indicated that timosaponin A III could be more potent antagonist to the 5-beta reductase and androgen receptor. Therefore, the extract of Anemarrhenae Rhizoma or timosaponin A III containing biomaterials can substitute the finasteride and minoxidil and can be applied to the alopecia protecting product and related industrial fields.