Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Deraya University, New Minia 61111, Egypt.
Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Minia University, Minia 61519, Egypt.
Int J Nanomedicine. 2020 Jul 28;15:5345-5360. doi: 10.2147/IJN.S239513. eCollection 2020.
Soft corals have been endorsed as a plentiful source of bioactive compounds with promising anti-inflammatory activities; therefore, exploring their potential as source of anti-inflammatory metabolites has stimulated a growing research interest.
To investigate the anti-inflammatory potential of the soft coral, sp., in its bulk and silver nanostructure. Metabolomics analysis of sp., followed by molecular docking studies, was also conducted in order to explore and predict the secondary metabolites that might provide its inhibitory actions on inflammation.
The petroleum ether and ethyl acetate fractions were used to synthesize silver nanoparticles. The prepared silver nanoparticles were characterized through UV-vis spectrophotometric, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses. Testing for the anti-inflammatory activity was performed against COX-1 and COX-2. Furthermore, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based metabolomics analysis and molecular docking were also applied.
A variety of secondary metabolites were identified, among them, sesquiterpenes were found to prevail. The petroleum ether and acetone fractions of sp. showed the highest COX-2 inhibitory activities, possibly attributable to their substantial contents of terpenoids. Additionally, the green synthesized silver nanoparticles of both the petroleum ether and ethyl acetate fractions of sp. demonstrated higher anti-COX-2 properties.
The obtained results showed the effectiveness of non-targeted metabolomics technique in metabolic profiling of sp., helping the search for new bioactive metabolites in future chemical studies on this soft coral. The interesting anti-inflammatory potential of the tested extracts and their nanoparticles could also be relevant to the development of new, effective anti-inflammatory agents.
软珊瑚已被证实是具有抗炎活性的生物活性化合物的丰富来源；因此，探索其作为抗炎代谢物来源的潜力引起了越来越多的研究兴趣。
研究软珊瑚 sp. 的整体及其银纳米结构的抗炎潜力。还对 sp. 进行代谢组学分析，随后进行分子对接研究，以探索和预测可能提供其抗炎作用的次生代谢物。
使用石油醚和乙酸乙酯部分合成银纳米颗粒。通过紫外可见分光光度法、透射电子显微镜（TEM）和傅里叶变换红外光谱（FTIR）分析对制备的银纳米颗粒进行了表征。对 COX-1 和 COX-2 进行抗炎活性测试。此外，还应用了基于液相色谱-质谱（LC-MS）的代谢组学分析和分子对接。
鉴定出多种次生代谢物，其中发现倍半萜类物质居多。 sp. 的石油醚和丙酮部分显示出最高的 COX-2 抑制活性，这可能归因于它们萜类化合物的大量含量。此外， sp. 的石油醚和乙酸乙酯部分的绿色合成银纳米颗粒均表现出更高的抗 COX-2 特性。
研究结果表明，非靶向代谢组学技术在代谢组学分析 sp. 方面具有有效性，有助于在未来对这种软珊瑚进行的化学研究中寻找新的生物活性代谢物。测试提取物及其纳米颗粒的有趣抗炎潜力也可能与开发新的、有效的抗炎药物有关。
