Michelia × alba (M. alba) is a flowering tree best known for its essential oil, which has long been used as a fragrance ingredient for perfume and cosmetics. In addition, the plant has been used in traditional medicine in Asia and dates back hundreds of years. To date, there is a limited number of publications on the bioactivities of M. alba, which focused on its tyrosinase inhibition, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant activities. Nevertheless, M. alba may have additional unexplored bioactivities associated with its bioactive compounds such as linalool (72.8% in flower oil and 80.1% in leaf oil), α-terpineol (6.04% flower oil), phenylethyl alcohol (2.58% flower oil), β-pinene (2.39% flower oil), and geraniol (1.23% flower oil). Notably, these compounds have previously been reported to exhibit therapeutic activities such as anti-cancer, anti-inflammation, anti-depression, anti-ulcer, anti-hypertriglyceridemia, and anti-hypertensive activities. In this review paper, we examine and discuss the scientific evidence on the phytochemistry, bioactivities, and traditional uses of M. alba. Here, we report a total of 168 M. alba biological compounds and highlight the therapeutic potential of its key bioactive compounds. This review may provide insights into the therapeutic potential of M. alba and its biologically active components for the prevention and treatment of diseases and management of human health and wellness.

The progressive decline of CD8⁺ cytotoxic T cells in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients due to infection-triggered cell exhaustion and cell death is significantly correlated with disease severity and progression into the life-threatening acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) stage. T cell exhaustion is a condition of cell dysfunction despite antigen engagement, characterized by augmented surface expression of immune checkpoint molecules such as programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1), which suppress T cell receptor (TCR) signaling and negatively impact the proliferative and effector activities of T cells. T cell function is tightly modulated by cellular glucose metabolism, which produces adequate energy to support a robust reaction when battling pathogen infection. The transition of the T cells from an active to an exhausted state following pathogen persistence involves a drastic change in metabolic activity. This review highlights the interplay between immune checkpoint molecules and glucose metabolism that contributes to T cell exhaustion in the context of chronic HIV infection, which could deliver an insight into the rational design of a novel therapeutic strategy.

<!-- [if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> <!-- [if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN TH <![endif]--> <!-- [if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> <!-- [if gte mso 10]> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:justify; text-justify:inter-ideograph; line-height:13.0pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"; color:black;} <![endif]--> Phytochemical compounds from plants provide good nutrient value and give immense health benefits to human health. The selection of a suitable extraction method is vital to obtain the targeted phytochemical compounds. In this study, the phytochemical compounds in white flower variety of Melastoma malabathricum aerial parts were extracted using Conventional Soxhlet Extraction (CSE), Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction (UAE) and Modified Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction (MUAE). The extraction performance was evaluated based on phytochemical analysis including total flavonoid content (TFC), total phenolic content (TPC), total saponin, total polysaccharide and total protein contents. The antioxidant activity of M. malabathricum extract was also determined using Diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) method. The analysis results showed significant effect (p<0.05) of MUAE method on TFC, TPC, total saponin, total polysaccharide, total protein content and DPPH (64.94 mg QE/g, 538.6 mg GAE/g, 1.87 mg EE/g, 320.05 mg GE/g, 399.32 mg BSA/g and 18 µg/mL respectively). Strong correlation effects between TFC (r = 0.992) and TPC (r = 0.993) on DPPH activity were observed. More than nineteen metabolites in M. malabathricum such as flavonoids, pentacyclic triterpenes, tannins, steroid, quinic acid and triterpenoid were detected using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with orbitrap mass spectrometry, and verified based on standard mass spectra and generated theoretical fragment. These results indicate that adoption of MUAE increases the efficiency of phytochemical compounds extraction when compared to the other two extraction methods studied.

Macrophage activation is a key event that triggers inflammatory response. The activation is accompanied by metabolic shift such as upregulated glucose metabolism. There are accumulating evidences showing the anti-inflammatory activity of Momordica charantia. However, the effects of M. charantia on inflammatory response and glucose metabolism in activated macrophages have not been fully established. The present study aimed to examine the effect of M. charantia in modulating lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammation and perturbed glucose metabolism in RAW264.7 murine macrophages. The results showed that LPS-induced NF-κB (p65) nuclear translocation was inhibited by M. charantia treatment. In addition, M. charantia was found to reduce the expression of inflammatory genes including IL6, TNF-α, IL1β, COX2, iNOS, and IL10 in LPS-treated macrophages. Furthermore, the data showed that M. charantia reduced the expression of GLUT1 and HK2 genes and lactate production (−28%), resulting in suppression of glycolysis. Notably, its effect on GLUT1 gene expression was found to be independent of LPS-induced inflammation. A further experiment also indicated that the bioactivities of M. charantia may be attributed to its key bioactive compound, charantin. Taken together, the study provided supporting evidences showing the potential of M. charantia for the treatment of inflammatory disorders.

Acupuncture has been used as an alternative and complementary therapy, however the selection of acupoints combination for a specific disease (or symptoms) highly depends on the experience of acupuncturists. The current study aimed to develop a reliable and quantifiable method for selection of acupoints combinations, which may improve treatment efficiency and reproducibility among acupuncturists. In the current study, a number of acupuncture prescriptions for treatment of acute or chronic gastritis had been collected and organized from public databases and literatures. Three types of associations, acupoints-symptoms associations (ASA), acupoints-acupoints associations (AAA), and symptoms-symptoms associations (SSA) were defined to delineate their connections. The network constructed by AAA was used to study the synergistic effects among acupoints combination whereas SSA network was used to examine coexistence of symptoms. On the other hand, ASA characterized the empirical association between acupoints and symptoms in the prescription database which may be considered as the mathematical representation of acupoints selection for a particular prescription. Then a novel method namely mutual information screening (MIS) was proposed for screening acupoints combinations based on pseudo mutual information maximization. The selected acupoints combinations of MIS method were verified to be in accordance with the rules of acupoints compatibility based on the theory of acupuncture. Validation of MIS through conditional entropy and significance test of the clinical records suggested the method to be reliable and robust. Furthermore, a ten-fold cross validation were carried out to evaluate the performance of MIS compared with artificial neural network (ANN)-based method. The F1-score of MIS was found to be 0.67, higher than that of the ANN-based method (0.58). The current results provided a reliable and practical tool for symptom-specific acupoints selection, which may help to develop a scientific basis for clinical acupuncture therapy.