Research at HKBU demonstrates how Traditional Chinese medicine can target an immune-mediated responses to alleviate Parkinson’s disease
A research team lead by, Assistant Professor at the Department of Biology, and Prof. Min Li, Professor at the School of Chinese Medicine, studied the use of the Traditional Chinese medicine herb Thunder God Vine-derived compound, Celastrol and its potential use in inhibiting an immune mechanism that contributes to the progression of Parkinson’s disease.
Alpha-synuclein is the name of the pathogenic protein underlying Parkinson’s disease. In patients, this protein accumulates and can activate the T cell immune response to damage the brain neurons. Their research found that Celastrol can effectively prevent processing of this protein in dendritic cells to impair the onset of T cells. In addition, Celastrol promoted the degradation of the alpha-synuclein protein in these cells. Therefore, the research provided further insight to the advantages of Traditional Chinese medicine in treating Parkinson’s disease.
The research was majorly funded by the Interdisciplinary Research Matching Scheme from the HKBU Research Council, and it was recently published in the Frontiers in Immunology journal (Ng et al., 2022; doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.833515).
浸大研究揭示中藥能有效針對免疫機制來緩和柏金遜症
香港浸會大學生物學助理教授張嘉龍博士及中醫藥學院李敏教授的研究團隊，共同研究傳統中藥雷公藤衍生化合物—雷公藤紅素(Celastrol)，對於抑制帕金遜症所誘導的免疫反應的效果。
a-突觸核蛋白（a-synuclein）是一種帕金遜症的致病蛋白。在帕金遜症患者中，該蛋白質會積聚並激活T細胞免疫反應，從而破壞大腦神經細胞。然而，研究結果發現雷公藤紅素能有效阻止a-突觸核蛋白於樹突狀細胞的作用，以抑制T細胞的免疫反應。此外，雷公藤紅素能促進-突觸核蛋白於細胞內的降解。因此，進一步了解使用中醫藥治療帕金遜症的優勢。
這研究主要由浸大研究委員會的跨學科研究配對計劃所資助，而研究結果的論文已刊登於學術期刊《免疫學前沿》(Frontiers in Immunology) 。
