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Potent and multi-faceted immune-modifying activities of specific phytochemicals from medicinal herbs
3rd International Conference and Expo on Herbal & Alternative Medicine
September 01-02, 2017 London, UK
Ning-Sun Yang
Agricultural Biotechnology Research Centre-Academia Sinica, Taiwan (ROC)
Keynote : Allied J Med Res
Abstract:
Recent studies showed that a spectrum of innate immune responses, various immune cell types and their cross-talks, and the associated inflammatory activities are involved with many different types of diseases. These findings strongly suggest that, by modulating specific immune cell responses or mechanism-defined, molecular/and cellular inflammation-suppressing activities of targeted diseases, we may then design new approaches for therapy or treatment of organ-specific inflammatory and chronic diseases, e.g., colitis, dermatitis, IBD and some cancers. Interestingly, it’s well known and appreciated that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), especially some commonly used medicinal herbs, claimed with functional specificity (e.g., anti-dermatitis, promote wound-healing), and routinely used historically for hundreds to thousands of years, have been established for their “strong anti-inflammatory” activities toward specific organ/tissue targets. With the observations and understandings, my laboratory has investigated a group of phytoextracts or the derived pure phytochemicals from specific TCM plants, and evaluated their bioactivities/effects, in vitro and in vivo, on dendritic cells, MDSCs, Th17, Tregs and other immune cell types in mouse models of skin inflammation, colitis and tumor metastasis systems. Experimentally, we employed functional genomics, proteomics, transgenic promoter analysis, cytokine/chemokine profiling, micro RNA array and signaling pathway analysis systems in various crossexamination studies. Results and findings, published in seven key papers during the past several years will be discussed and projected for future research directions. The key lesson we learned from these studies: Highly specific cellular, molecular and signaling pathway effect on mouse and human dendritic cells, tumor stromal cells, skin tissue cells can be obtained by specific phytochemicals from TCM, apparently contributing to the potent inflammatory-modulatory activities in test animals of various disease models.
Biography:
Ning-Sung Yang is a Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow of Academia Sinica and the associated universities in Taipei, Taiwan. His major research interests include gene-based cancer vaccines, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer phytochemicals, and functional genomics studies of dendritic cells. He has helped the development of gene gun technology and pioneered its application to mammalian transgene experimental systems and gene therapy approaches. After thirty years of a research career in USA, he went back to his home town in Taiwan and established the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center in Academia Sinica, Taipei, which is now recognized for medicinal herb and crop plant research. He was elected in 2006 as a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, USA). He has published more than 160 research papers, and obtained 14 USA patents.
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