Jamtsho, Tenzin, Loukas, Alex, and Wangchuk, Phurpa (2024) Pharmaceutical Potential of Remedial Plants and Helminths for Treating Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Pharmaceuticals, 17 (7). 819.

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Abstract

Research is increasingly revealing that inflammation significantly contributes to various diseases, particularly inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). IBD is a major medical challenge due to its chronic nature, affecting at least one in a thousand individuals in many Western countries, with rising incidence in developing nations. Historically, indigenous people have used natural products to treat ailments, including IBD. Ethnobotanically guided studies have shown that plant-derived extracts and compounds effectively modulate immune responses and reduce inflammation. Similarly, helminths and their products offer unique mechanisms to modulate host immunity and alleviate inflammatory responses. This review explored the pharmaceutical potential of Aboriginal remedial plants and helminths for treating IBD, emphasizing recent advances in discovering anti-inflammatory small-molecule drug leads. The literature from Scopus, MEDLINE Ovid, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science was retrieved using keywords such as natural product, small molecule, cytokines, remedial plants, and helminths. This review identified 55 important Aboriginal medicinal plants and 9 helminth species that have been studied for their anti-inflammatory properties using animal models and in vitro cell assays. For example, curcumin, berberine, and triptolide, which have been isolated from plants; and the excretory-secretory products and their protein, which have been collected from helminths, have demonstrated anti-inflammatory activity with lower toxicity and fewer side effects. High-throughput screening, molecular docking, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have been engaged in compound identification, while clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) gene editing and RNA sequencing have been employed to understand molecular interactions and regulations. While there is potential for pharmaceutical application of Aboriginal medicinal plants and gastrointestinal parasites in treating IBD, there is an urgent need to qualify these plant and helminth therapies through reproducible clinical and mechanistic studies.

Item ID:	83032
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1424-8247
Keywords:	natural product; small molecule; cytokines; remedial plants; helminths
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Copyright Information:	© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Date Deposited:	26 Jun 2024 22:05
FoR Codes:	34 CHEMICAL SCIENCES > 3404 Medicinal and biomolecular chemistry > 340401 Biologically active molecules @ 50% 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3214 Pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences > 321405 Pharmaceutical sciences @ 50%
SEO Codes:	21 INDIGENOUS > 2104 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and culture > 210403 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander customary practices @ 50% 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280103 Expanding knowledge in the biomedical and clinical sciences @ 50%
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