Discovery and characterisation of novel biologics from Cortex lycii radicis (DiGuPi)

• Main Author: Lau, Ee Wen
• Other Authors: Jimmy Pingkwan Tam @ James P Tam
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/61729
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Cortex lycii radicis (CLR), root bark of Lycium barbarum, had been used in East Asia for more than 1000 years and is a well-known traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). It is used in TCM for fever, coughing and breathing difficulties. It can also be used for the treatment of diabetes. Cysteine-rich peptides (CRPs) are a class of peptides that known to be metabolically stable and exhibit a wide range of biological activities. They could be the active ingredients in most of the traditional Chinese medicinal (TCM) herbs, CLR in this case, as it is resistant towards heat, enzymatic and acid degradation. This indicates its enormous potential to be a novel class of synthetic druggable biologics derived from natural products for therapeutic purposes. The CRPs were extracted, isolated and purified from dried herb samples of CLR. Sequencing and disulfide mapping were performed on these purified CRPs and various metabolic assays were performed to characterize their bioactivities. Interestingly, one of the CRPs isolated showed anti-inflammatory activities by inhibiting the production of pro-inflammatory mediators. Further studies may demonstrate its biological and pharmacological function and may one day provide good candidates for drug discovery.