Tripterygium wilfordii contains anticancer substances

Tripterygium wilfordii is a traditional Chinese medicine, which has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases for hundreds of years Johns Hopkins Medical College has isolated a natural substance from Tripterygium wilfordii, which has the function of inhibiting gene control system in cells Based on this, it is expected to develop new anticancer drugs The study was published as a cover article in the March issue of nature, chemical biology "The extract of this traditional Chinese medicine can be used to treat the overall symptoms of patients, and has a high evaluation in anti-inflammatory, immune system, contraceptive and anti-cancer." Liu junou, Professor of pharmacology and molecular science at Johns Hopkins University, said, "as early as 1972, we had known that an active substance called triptolide can cause cell growth interruption, and until now we have found the reason." Liu junou explained that triptolide is an active ingredient extracted from Tripterygium wilfordii, a traditional Chinese medicine, which can effectively fight cancer, arthritis and skin transplant rejection in animal experiments Moreover, under low dose conditions, it can inhibit all 60 cell lines listed by the National Cancer Research Center, and even kill some cancer cell lines The team systematically tested the effect of triptolide on a variety of gene control proteins, and observed new DNA, RNA and proteins synthesized in cells They treated HeLa cancer cells with triptolide, and compared with untreated cancer cells one hour later, they found that triptolide treated cancer cells took longer to synthesize new proteins and DNA, while RNA regeneration was almost immediately inhibited Further observation of the three RNA producing enzymes showed that triptolide could only inhibit one of them, namely, RNAPII Because RNAPII enzyme needs several smaller proteins to assist, researchers mixed a small piece of gene and RNAPII component in test tubes, and added triptolide in some test tubes while others did not It was observed that the protease combination containing TFIIH cluster would stop working when triptolide was added Furthermore, TFIIH is composed of 10 individual proteins, many of which have obvious measurable activity According to the known information and experiments, triptolide can directly bind to one of XPB proteins and inhibit the activity of enzyme "Other researchers have found that triptolide can bind to an unknown protein, but they haven't identified what it is, and we're pretty sure it's XPB protein," Liu said To confirm that the interaction between Triptolide and XPB stopped cell growth, they also produced 12 different active chemicals containing triptolide, which were used to treat HeLa cancer cells in different doses By counting the number of cells and testing the activity level of XPB, the team found that the two were related: the lower the activity of XPB, the more obvious the effect of stopping the growth of cells, and the better the effect, and vice versa.