Lack of understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying Parkinson’s disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder, has hindered the development of novel therapeutics with disease-modifying effect in parkinsonian patients. The emerging field of chemical biology which utilizes diverse small molecules especially natural products to explore the biological processes offers a “probe to drug” approach to address this problem. TCMs contain a huge reservoir of bioactive small molecules that contribute to the efficacy in thousands of years’ clinical practice. Such molecules working together in similar or different modes of action may hold the key to unlocking the mystery of PD biology [1].
A integrated methodology combining cytological profiling platform with NMR-guided isolation has been developed to capture and characterize the bioactive components from traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) [2,3]. A number of natural products have been identified from selected TCMs with characteristic phenotypes against cells harvested from PD patients. We will discuss the identification and cytological profiles of the compounds, as well as their potential as chemical probes for in-depth interrogation of the signaling pathways implicated in PD, and thus support future neuroprotective or disease-modifying drug discovery.
[1] Tang C, Ye Y, Feng Y, Quinn R. Natural Product Reports ( 2016), 33, 6-25.
[2] Wang C, Yang X, Mellick G, Feng Y. ACS Chemical Neuroscience, ( 2016), DOI 10.1021/acschemneuro.6b00245
[3] Wang D, Feng Y, Murtaza M, Wood S, Mellick G, Hooper J, Quinn R. J. Natural Products (2016), 79(2), 353-361.