Sanguinarine and Its Role in Chronic Diseases

Abstract

The use of natural products derived from plants as medicines precedes even the recorded human history. In the past few years there were renewed interests in developing natural compounds and understanding their target specificity for drug development for many devastating human diseases. This has been possible due to remarkable advancements in the development of sensitive chemistry and biology tools. Sanguinarine is a benzophenanthridine alkaloid derived from rhizomes of the plant species Sanguinaria canadensis. The alkaloid can exist in the cationic iminium and neutral alkanolamine forms. Sanguinarine is an excellent DNA and RNA intercalator where only the iminium ion binds. Both forms of the alkaloid, however, shows binding to functional proteins like serum albumins, lysozyme and hemoglobin. The molecule is endowed with remarkable biological activities and large number of studies on its various activities has been published potentiating its development as a therapeutic agent particularly for chronic human diseases like cancer, asthma, etc. In this article, we review the properties of this natural alkaloid, and its diverse medicinal applications in relation to how it modulates cell death signaling pathways and induce apoptosis through different ways, its utility as a therapeutic agent for chronic diseases and its biological effects in animal and human models. These data may be useful to understand the therapeutic potential of this important and highly abundant alkaloid that may aid in the development of sanguinarine-based therapeutic agents with high efficacy and specificity.

Development of a Cell-Based High-Throughput Screening Assay to Identify Porcine Host Defense Peptide-Inducing Compounds

“…Additionally, a few histone or DNA methylation inhibitors such as UNC0642 [41], UNC0224 [42], UNC1215 [43], and S-adenosylhomocysteine [44] were also found to have potential HDP-inducing activities (Table 1). Several natural products such as ikarugamycin [45, 46], cynaroside [47], and sanguinarine [48] that are known to have anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, and/or antimicrobial activities but with no confirmed epigenetic modification properties were also identified (Table 2). It is surprising to observe that a number of natural products appeared to inhibit HDP gene expression with a SSMD value of less than −3.0 (Figure 2).…”

“…Sanguinarine is a benzophenanthridine alkaloid extracted from the bloodroot plant Sanguinaria canadensis known to have anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, antiproliferative, and proapoptotic properties [58]. Although its mechanisms of action remain unclear [48], sanguinarine was recently identified as a putative inhibitor of heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) [31], whose activity has been demonstrated to be regulated by reversible acetylation [59].…”

The Antiangiogenic Effect of Sanguinarine Chloride on Experimental Choroidal Neovacularization in Mice via Inhibiting Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor

“…Natural herbal products or components are an important source of alternatives because of their low toxicity and low cost (Fu et al, 2018). One of the promising candidate is Sanguinarine Chloride (SC) (Mackraj et al, 2008;Basu and Kumar, 2016), a benzo phenanthridine alkaloid derived from the root of Sanguinaria Canadensis and other poppy-fumaria species, which has been proved to exert anti-tumor properties due to its anti-proliferation, antiangiogenic and anti-invasive properties in various preclinical studies (Gaziano et al, 2016;Achkar et al, 2017). Specifically, SC could inhibit angiogenesis of cancer cells via blocking VEGF-induced vessel growth, cell migration, sprouting, and survival (Galadari et al, 2017;Xu et al, 2012;Eun and Koh, 2004;Basini et al, 2007a;Basini et al, 2007c).…”

Sanguinarine Attenuates Collagen-Induced Platelet Activation and Thrombus Formation

“…Other biological and pharmacological activities of sanguinarine include anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antitumor. Recently, these activities have attracted greater attention from researchers around the world [ 13 ]. A study by Jeng reported that the effect of sanguinarine on platelet activation in vitro is related to the production of thromboxane and cAMP [ 14 ].…”