Bactericidal catechins damage the lipid bilayer

Catechins inhibit angiotensin II-induced vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation via mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway

“…Green tea consumption has been associated with a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular diseases (Weisburger and Chung, 2002). Among the green tea components, the family of catechins such as cathechin, epicatechin (EC), epicatechin-3-gallate (ECG), epigallocatechin (EGC), and epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) have been known to be involved in the reduction of atherosclerosis (Ikigai et al, 1993), stroke (Uchida et al, 1995), and hypocholesterolemia (Yamaguchi et al, 1991). Recently, it has been reported that EGCG inhibited the proliferation of VSMC (Yokozawa et al, 1995;Cao and Cao, 1999;Zheng et al, 2004), whereas the molecular mechanisms of catechins in the inhibition of the proliferation of VSMC remain to be defined.…”

A novel assay of bacterial peptidoglycan synthesis for natural product screening

“…36 Pleurotin was discovered as an anti-bacterial substance by Robbin et al 37 and (À)-epigallocatechin gallate was reported to have an anti-bacterial activity. 38 The relationship between the reported activities for these compounds and our current observation remains to be further studied. Nevertheless, the method described here is robust enough to screen a large number of mixture samples in a high-throughput mode, and will greatly facilitate a discovery of novel antibiotics.…”

Inhibitory effects of epigallocatechin gallate on compound 48/80-inducedmast cell activation and passive cutaneous anaphylaxis

“…Green tea, specially green tea catechins, shows the pharmacological effects such as anticarcinogenic activity (Ogata et al, 1995;Stoner and Mukhtar, 1995), antioxidant activity (Han, 2003;Kim et al, 2004), anticarcinogenic and related dental activity (Hattori et al, 1990;Saeki et al, 1993), antimicrobial activity (Ikigai et al, 1993), and prevention of cardiovascular disease (Uchida et al, 1995;Yokozawa et al, 1995). Most of the polyphenols in green tea are flavanols, commonly known as catechins: the major catechins in green tea are (-)-epicatechin (EC), (-)-epicatechin-3-gallate (ECG), (-)-epigallocatechin (EGC), and (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) (Ahmad et al, 1998).…”