Fucoxanthin, a Marine Carotenoid, Reverses Scopolamine-Induced Cognitive Impairments in Mice and Inhibits Acetylcholinesterase in Vitro

Abstract

Fucoxanthin, a natural carotenoid abundant in edible brown seaweeds, has been shown to possess anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, anti-obesity and anti-diabetic effects. In this study, we report for the first time that fucoxanthin effectively protects against scopolamine-induced cognitive impairments in mice. In addition, fucoxanthin significantly reversed the scopolamine-induced increase of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity and decreased both choline acetyltransferase activity and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression. Using an in vitro AChE activity assay, we discovered that fucoxanthin directly inhibits AChE with an IC50 value of 81.2 μM. Molecular docking analysis suggests that fucoxanthin likely interacts with the peripheral anionic site within AChE, which is in accordance with enzymatic activity results showing that fucoxanthin inhibits AChE in a non-competitive manner. Based on our current findings, we anticipate that fucoxanthin might exhibit great therapeutic efficacy for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease by acting on multiple targets, including inhibiting AChE and increasing BDNF expression.

The pathological roles of NDRG2 in Alzheimer's disease, a study using animal models and APPwt‐overexpressed cells

“…The animals were group‐housed in a room maintained at 23±1°C with a 12‐hour light/dark cycle and free access to water and food. The process of intracerebroventricular‐injecting Aβ 1‐42 in the rat and intraperitoneal injection of scopolamine in the mice has been described in previous report . Briefly, Aβ 1‐42 peptide was resuspended in DMSO at 5 mmol/L and diluted by cold F12 medium to yield a 100 μmol/L stock solution and then incubated at 4°C for 24 hours.…”

“…The process of intracerebroventricular-injecting Aβ in the rat and intraperitoneal injection of scopolamine in the mice has been described in previous report. 13,14 Briefly, Aβ 1-42 peptide was resuspended in DMSO at 5 mmol/L and diluted by cold F12 medium to yield a 100 μmol/L stock solution and then incubated at 4°C for 24 hours. The preparation was then centrifuged at 14 000 g for 10 minutes at 4°C.…”

The Biochemistry and Antioxidant Properties of Carotenoids

“…Fucoxanthin intake may have health benefits for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease by inhibiting acetylcholinesterase and enhancing brain-derived neurotrophic factor expression [83].…”

Enzymatic extraction of fucoxanthin from brown seaweeds

“…It also occurs at lower concentrations in golden algae (Chrysophyceae) and Raphidophyceae (Roy et al, 2011;Larkum et al, 2012). Fucoxanthin has many applications in human health as an inhibitor of tumour activity (Hussain et al, 2016;Mei et al, 2017), bacteria (Shannon & Abu-Ghannam, 2016), type 2 diabetes (Miyashita et al, 2011), obesity (Abidov et al, 2010;D'Orazio et al, 2012), oxidative stress (Kong et al, 2016), metabolic syndrome (Nishikawa et al, 2012), Alzheimer's disease (Lin et al, 2016) and UV light-induced damage (Matsui et al, 2016). However, the majority of brown seaweed biomass harvested globally each year is used for animal feed, fertiliser, biofuel production or lowvalue human food products (Loureiro et al, 2015;Wells et al, 2017).…”