Osthole, a natural occurring coumarin, an ingredient of a Traditional Chinese Medicine, possesses a range of pharmacological and biochemical functions, including hepatoprotection, neuroprotection, anti-cancer, anti-osteoporosis, and anti-inflammatory properties.
Recently, osthole has attracted intense research interest. Of great interest is the possibility that osthole could be a promising lead compound for exploiting new drugs for therapy of several diseases. These include insight into strong cytotoxic activity on cancer cells by causing apoptotic bodies, DNA fragmentation, enhancing human poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) degradation, inhibition of proliferation by suppressing fatty acid synthase (FASN), protection of liver by increasing metabolism of lipases, prevention of hepatitis by inhibiting the Fas-mediated apoptotic pathway, induction of differentiation by increasing bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-2 production and activating SMAD1/5/8, p38, extracellular signal- regualted kinase (ERK) 1/2, and Wnt/β-catenin signaling, neuroprotectioin by a mechanism of inhibiting ionic currents, including Na+ and Ca2+ channels. It is therefore useful to build up some correlations with the data available in order to better explore the molecular and cellular mechanism of osthole actions in the treatment of diseases.
This review will focus on recent advances in molecular and cellular mechanism of osthole actions.
Key words: osthole; coumarin; anti-cancer; hepatoprotection; neuroprotection; anti-osteoporosis; anti-inflammation
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