Recent Advances in Drug Delivery System for Bioactive Glycosides from Traditional Chinese Medicine

Abstract

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been used in China for thousands of years for the prevention and treatment of various diseases. The materials that exert a therapeutic effect are called the active ingredients. The bioactive glycosides are important active ingredients from TCM that can make significant contributions to treating diseases. Because of the possibilities of various clinical applications, the properties and administration of these bioactive glycosides deserve further investigation. Their promising treatment effects, however, are hindered by their poor solubility, poor stability and rapid elimination. Therefore, it is necessary that we improve the therapeutic efficacy of bioactive glycosides by overcoming these problems. Meanwhile, some practical design strategies and novel drug delivery vehicles based on drug delivery systems provide favorable support in clinical practice for these active ingredients. This review summarizes diverse pharmacological activities of bioactive glycosides and focuses on recent advances in delivery system for these active constitutes; in particular, some glycol glycosides can effectively cure intractable diseases through targeted drug delivery. This review elucidates some design strategies for drug delivery system that are mainly based on two methods (avoiding physical barriers by changing dosage forms and enhancing the ability to bind to receptors or proteins after administration) and indicate the current challenges during the combination of delivery vehicles and these glycosides in hopes of promoting the process of receiving ideal therapeutic efficacy of them in future studies.

Liposomes as Multifunctional Nano-Carriers for Medicinal Natural Products

“…Docetaxel (Taxotere) was specifically delivered to hepatocytes by glycyrrhetinic acid -modified liposomes via receptor-mediated endocytosis ( Li et al, 2012a ). Glycoside normally contained a sugar bound to another functional group via a glycosidic bond ( Li et al, 2018b ). For example, ginsenoside (triterpenoid glycoside), isolated from genus Panax ( ginseng ), a class of triterpene glycosides ( Hong et al, 2019 ).…”

Pharmacokinetics and drug delivery systems for puerarin, a bioactive flavone from traditional Chinese medicine

“…In addition, nanoparticles also possess the ability to improve the targeted effect and reduce the toxicity and side effects. Solid lipid nanoparticles and polymer nanoparticles are the focus of attention in clinical researches (Li et al., 2018).…”

“…A novel puerarin gastric floating system was prepared by a 3 D extrusion-based printing technique, with good gastric residence time and controlled release ability (Li et al., 2019). In addition, other carriers used for improving the bioavailability of puerarin such as phospholipid complex (Li et al., 2006), microsphere (Song et al., 2016), micelle (Li et al., 2018), liposome (Deng et al., 2010; Zhao et al., 2016) and spray (Lu et al., 2007) were reported.…”

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: Effects on secondary metabolite accumulation of traditional Chinese medicines

“…Secondary metabolites are the result of interactions of plants with the environment to establish a defence mechanism in the long-term evolutionary process (Covington et al 2018;Wang et al 2020). Many types of secondary metabolite are found in medicinal plants, such as phenols, flavonoids, alkaloids, coumarins, lignins, glycosides, terpenes and saponins, which are also important indicators used to characterize the quality of TCM (Li et al 2018;Liu & Jiang 2012;Lu 1987;Zhang et al 2020). For example, the phenolic compound salvianolic acid in Salvia miltiorrhiza, the alkaloid compound berberine in Coptis rhizoma, the sesquiterpene compound artemisinin in Artemisia annua, the triterpenoid compound glycyrrhizic acid in Glycyrrhiza uralensis, and the saponin compound ginsenoside in Panax ginseng.…”