Ten years of contemporary Shennong not to "taste" herbs

Yue Jianmin is in the lab.

In order to obtain novel active compounds, a systematic chemical study was carried out on 105 medicinal plants, and more than 2,800 natural compounds with diverse structures were obtained. Among them, 600 new compounds and 63 new framework compounds were discovered for the first time in the world. A library of more than 3,500 compounds took ten years -

He listened to the story of the drug discovery by Yue Jianmin of the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and told him the story of finding drugs for more than a decade. He realized that today's “Shen Nong” people have to get new drugs from the herb and how hard it is.

Sampling: Into the rainforest on the plateau Yue Jianmin said that the magic of nature far surpasses the wisdom of human beings. Natural products are important resources for discovery of drug lead compounds. The hit rate of the drug's lead structure is much higher than that of synthetic compounds.

"Approximately 53% of the 1010 drugs that were marketed worldwide between 1981 and 2006 were related to natural compounds." He said that Chinese herbal medicine is even more a treasure house. "Even if there are many secrets in the private practice, it is worth our exploration."

Commonly used traditional Chinese medicine Gao Liang Jiang, Yue Jianmin found the "Buster" of Helicobacter pylori. Animal experiments show that these compounds can not only 100% kill the bacteria, but also make 80% of gastric ulcer wounds recovered, the effect is better than the same dose of antibiotics. The Smilax glabra acetic acid in the Smilax glabra herb has the function of inhibiting the growth of tumor neovascularization and isolating the antimalarial compound from the tongue tree. For more than ten years, the Chinese herbal medicine has given him many surprises. For these surprises, he paid more: on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, shepherdesmus and tropical rainforests were searched for local folk medicinal plants. He collected almost all species of the tiger genus, and the pupa family also collected almost “large” plants. Slam."

Analysis: During the more than 20 years of fighting between Qi Shi Shang and Chi Chinese Herbalists, Yue Jianmin felt that folk rumors still need to be scientifically proven. For example, a rare herb in the Western Regions passed to him, he found out that there were no special medicinal ingredients in it. He found that fatty acids and phenols were extremely high in content. Fatty acids softened ice crystals, making them difficult to make. Frostbite, phenols are resistant to ultraviolet light, which may be the result of adapting to the high altitude environment.

He jokingly said, I really don't know how Shennong and Li Shizhen used herbs to identify herbs. Obviously, the contemporary "Shen Nong" is not so good. His lab is full of various instruments. Chinese herbal medicines are extracted and concentrated, and then separated by various methods—spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, chemical transformation...

“In a plant, there are often hundreds of compounds. Even the same compound may have a large group of 'brothers and sisters' who are similar in length. It is not easy to ask for the most beautiful and active ones!” Yue Jianmin said. To find out, these compounds have to be carefully "modified" to make them more potent and less toxic. In collaboration with Academician Ding Jian, Yue Jianmin and his colleagues have reformed the structure of acetic acid compounds from Smilax glabra and obtained 47 derivatives. Among them, 9 have been significantly improved in activity, and the structure-activity relationship of the antitumor compounds has been summarized.

Doing this step is not finished yet. For a compound to develop into a new drug, the preclinical study must be completed first, and a sufficient amount of sample must be obtained to feed the experimental mouse. Yue Jianmin is working with the research group of academician Tang Xican to conduct a preclinical study on anti-Alzheimer's drugs.

This compound has a very low content in natural plants. It can extract 10 milligrams in 5 kilograms and extract 100 milligrams hard. "Hey, a few mice will be gone!" Later, his research team spent half a year and opened up the synthetic technology route. Until the kilogram can be obtained, the experiment continues.

Is it complicated and worth it? "The discovery of active compounds is the source of the creation of new drugs, and it is worth the hard work," Yue Jianmin said.

Reporter Xu Qimin