Medicinal plants; Constituents; Structure; Activity; Distribution

 

Prof. Renxiang TAN

rxtan@nju.edu.cn

 

This project pertains to the fundamental investigation on chemical structure and bioactivity of the phytochemicals from important medicinal plants in China, in order to reveal the scientific connotation of their prevention and treatment of diseases and to provide vital clues to discover drugs. The major findings are as follows: (1) This project finds that medicinal plants with abiotic stress tolerance are rich in flavonoids, phenylpropanoids and other polyphenol components, revealing that a part of polyphenols has significant antioxidant and/or free radical scavenging effects with structure-activity relationship.

 

These findings can explain the adaptability of plants to environment and reveal the pharmacological mechanism of these plans. (2) This project explores the association of antioxidant and free radical scavenging effects of phytochemicals with disease development and traditional use of plants, and finds out a series of xanthine oxidase, monoamine oxidase and nitric oxide synthase inhibitors and reveals the structure-activity relationship of those ingredients. These findings provide important clues to discover the relevant drugs. (3) This project finds that medicinal plants against biotic stresses are rich in antibacterial, insect-resistant, anti-cancer and other active substances, reveals the chemical nature of self-protection of these plants, and demonstrates an effective way to search for new bioactive natural products from the ecological adaptation of plants. (4) With research system created by this program, we find a large number of the new components with biological functions and/or chemical systematic significance, and reveal the important characteristics of chromatography and law of spectroscopy related components. These new findings resulted from the project have generated a total of 208 SCI-indexed papers, which have been cited by others for 1892 times founded in SCI-indexed journals such as “Chemical Reviews” and “Journal of the National Cancer Institute”. This indicates that the project has appreciable creativity, and systematic and distinctive characteristics, which promotes the development of subjects related with plant resources, and organic chemistry of natural products. It also contributes substantially to the international leadership of our country in the field.