Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes substantial public health care burdens. Intensive efforts have been made to find effective and safe disease-modifying treatment and symptomatic intervention alternatives against AD. Researchers led by Prof. PEI Gang from Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that Smart Soup, a traditional Chinese medicine formula, ameliorates Alzheimer’s disease, providing a practical therapeutic strategy against the disease.
Current FDA-approved Alzheimer’s drugs are only symptomatic interventions, such as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonists, which are effective only for about half of the patients for approximately 6-12 months. Up till now, no disease-modifying medications have been approved in the last 10 years. Considering that, as with many other complex diseases, the pathogenesis of AD has a multifactorial basis that includes both genetic and environmental risk factors, a successful therapeutic strategy against this disease might be a set of concerted pharmacological interventions that interact with multiple targets including Aβ/tau pathology, abnormal inflammation and neuronal loss.
The formulae of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) have been well documented in various Chinese ancient literatures as prescriptions for specific ailments. According to the major precepts of TCM, these TCM formulae emphasize not only the symptoms but on restoring and maintaining the body homeostasis, which is very similar to the rationale of modern multi-targeted therapeutics. Smart Soup (SS), a Chinese medicine formula composed of Rhizoma Acori Tatarinowii (AT), Poria cum Radix Pini (PRP) and Radix Polygalae (RP), is a typical prescription against memory deficits.
Under the guidance of Prof. PEI Gang and Dr. ZHAO Jian, graduate students HOU Yujun et al assessed the efficacy of SS against AD. They found that Oral administration of SS ameliorated the cognitive impairment of AD transgenic mice, with reduced Aβ levels, retarded Aβ amyloidosis and reduced Aβ-induced gliosis and neuronal loss in the brains of AD mice. Consistently, SS treatment reduced amyloid-related locomotor dysfunctions and premature death of AD transgenic Drosophila. Furthermore, mechanistic studies showed that RP reduced Aβ generation, whereas AT and PRP exerted neuroprotective effects against Aβ.
These results indicate that SS could be effective against AD, providing a practical therapeutic strategy against the disease.
This study entitled “Smart Soup, a traditional Chinese medicine formula, ameliorates amyloid pathology and the related cognitive deficits” was published in PLoS ONE on November 11th, 2014.
This study was done in collaboration with Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) and Ruijin Hospital. It was funded by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Science and Technology Support Program, the Ministry of Science and Technology and Shanghai Municipal Commission for Science and Technology.
Figure. Smart Soup ameliorates learning and memory impairment of AD transgenic mice in behavior assay. (Image provided by Prof. PEI Gang’s group)
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