Schisandra chinensis polysaccharides exerts anti-oxidative effect in vitro through Keap1-Nrf2-ARE pathway

Qian Li,Shijian Quan,Xiankun Qin,Yang Yu,Ping Xiao

doi:10.1590/fst.44621

Abstract

Schisandra chinensis polysaccharide (SCP) is extracted from a well-known traditional Chinese medicine Schisandra chinensis (SC). We purified a new compound and would like to analyze the effect of SCP on oxidative stress (OS) in vitro. SCP was identified by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and infrared spectrum (IR). The effect of SCP on cell proliferation, activity of oxidative and anti-oxidative index superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), malonaldehyde (MDA), glutathione (GSH), protein expression of nuclear factor E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) and its down-stream factors expression, stability of Nrf2, and binding activity of Nrf2 with DNA were tested using different methods in 293T cells. The result showed that SCP enhanced the cell proliferation of 293T cells, the contents of GSH and CAT, and the activity of SOD, while decreased the content of MDA. In addition, SCP promoted the transfer of Nrf2 from cytoplasm to nucleus, the binding activity of Nrf2 with DNA, the stability of Nrf2 protein, and prolonged the half-life of Nrf2. SCP showed a strong anti-oxidative activity and activation of the Nrf2 pathway, indicating that SCP had the potential to be developed into the natural anti-oxidant in the future.

Highlights

Oxidative stress (OS) refers to the imbalance between oxidation and anti-oxidation, production of a large number of oxidation intermediates (Sies, 2015)
Schisandra chinensis (SC) is a common herbal medicine with sedative and tonic actions (Hancke et al, 1999), whcih can significantly enhance the antioxidant function in animal through inhibiting free radicals formnation or directly scavenging free radicals (Cheng et al, 2013)
Schisandra chinensis polysaccharide (SCP) is extracted from SC with a molecular weight of 5.3 × 103 Da, shows non-toxic and harmless, and possesses health benefits and pharmacological values (Li et al, 2018)

Summary

Introduction

Oxidative stress (OS) refers to the imbalance between oxidation and anti-oxidation, production of a large number of oxidation intermediates (Sies, 2015). OS is always considered to be an important factor leading to aging and disease (Kattoor et al, 2017; Bisht et al, 2017). Many studies have reported that more than 90% of human diseases are caused by OS (Klieser et al, 2019). OS are usually divided into two categories: endogenous factors and exogenous factors. The endogenous factors mainly include chronic or acute diseases, such as tumors, essential diseases, diabetic nephropathy, trauma, stroke, etc. OS may be caused by several factors (pollution, smoke, diet, etc.), and is involved in various pathologies such as cancer, Alzheimer, etc (Jabarpour et al, 2019; Huang et al, 2019; Yuan et al, 2019)

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