Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Kumarasingha, R.
• Palombo, E.A.
• Bhave, M.
• Yeo, T.C.
• Lim, D.S.L.
• Tu, C.L.
• Shaw, J.M.
• Boag, P.R.

Titel

Enhancing a search for traditional medicinal plants with anthelmintic action by using wild type and stress reporter Caenorhabditis elegans strains as screening tools

Ist Teil von

• International journal for parasitology, 2014-04, Vol.44 (5), p.291-298

Ort / Verlag

England: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• [Display omitted] •Screen for anthelmintic activity of plants extracts was developed.•Plants were chosen based on their use by traditional healers in Malaysia.•Five plant extracts had significant anthelmintic activity.•Induced stress response pathways were distinct between plant extracts and two commercially available anthelmintics. Traditional healers in Sarawak, Malaysia, use plants such as Picria fel-terrae, Linariantha bicolor and Lansium domesticum to treat gastrointestinal infections. This study aimed to test whether their nematocidal activities could be confirmed in vitro using highly standardised Caenorhabditis elegans models. We applied eight different ethanol solubilised plant extracts and two commercial anthelmintic drugs to larval and adult stages of C. elegans in vitro. Seven C. elegans strains were evaluated, one wild type and six strains with GFP-tagged stress response pathways to help characterise and compare the pathways affected by plant extracts. Our in vitro screen confirmed that both of the commercial anthelmintic drugs and five of the eight traditionally used plant extracts had significant nematocidal activity against both larval and adult C. elegans. The most effective extracts were from P. fel-terrae. The plant extracts triggered different stress response pathways from the commercial anthelmintic drugs. This study showed that using traditional knowledge of plant medicinal properties in combination with a C. elegans in vitro screen provided a rapid and economical test with a high hit rate compared with the random screening of plants for nematocidal activities. The use of transgenic C. elegans strains may allow this approach to be refined further to investigate the mode of action of active extracts.