Role of metabolomics assisting the pharmacological activity and molecular mechanism in Panax notoginseng

OBJECTIVE The strategy and techniques of metabolomics was applied for the pharmacology and molecular mechanism research of Panax notoginseng(PN)in traditional Chinese medicine.METHODS The global metabolic profiles of PN were investigated by the NMR-based metabolomics.The different parts of PN were scanned into metabolic profiles by 1H-NMR.The significant differences of these metabolic profiles were analyzed by PCA,PLS-DA,PLS-R,etc.The pharmacological effects including free radical scavenging activity(FRSA),anti-proliferation to human colorectal cancer cell line(HCT116),xanthine oxidase inhibition,were followed in vitro.Additionally,the molecular mechanism of xanthine degrading process by PN was attempted by 1H-NMR.RESULTS The NMR-based metabolic profiles of different parts(upper part of root,middle part of root,lower part of root,hairy root,leaf and stem)of PN presented significant differences by multivariate statistical analysis.The hairy root and leaf revealed highest anti-proliferative effect to HCT116;the leaf and stem of PN showed highest level of FRSA;the leaf,stem,hairy root effected the xanthine degrading 1 metabolic pathway.And the H-NMR based molecular mechanism experiment showed that the xanthine metabolic pathway degraded by PN depended on the direct inhibition to xanthine.CONCLUSION The metabolomics strategy provided complementary chemical profiling to medicinal herbs,which accelerated the development of pharmacology and mechanism of action in traditional medicine.The subsidiary parts of PN,as leaf,stem and hairy root,have the potential to develop new drugs in curing cancer,inflammation and gout.