Malaria, as a major global health problem, continues to affect a large number of people each year, especially those in developing countries. Effective drug discovery is still one of the main efforts to control malaria. As natural products are still considered as a key source for discovery and development of therapeutic agents, we have evaluated more than 2000 plant extracts against Plasmodium falciparum. As a result, we discovered dozens of plant leads that displayed antimalarial activity. Our phytochemical study of some of these plant extracts led to the identification of several potent antimalarial compounds. The prior comprehensive review article entitled “Antimalarial activity of plant metabolites” by Schwikkard and Van Heerden (2002) reported structures of plant-derived compounds with antiplasmodial activity and covered literature up to the year 2000. As a continuation of this effort, the present review covers the antimalarial compounds isolated from plants, including marine plants, reported in the literature from 2001 to the end of 2017. During the span of the last 17 years, 175 antiplasmodial compounds were discovered from plants. These active compounds are organized in our review article according to their plant families. In addition, we also include ethnobotanical information of the antimalarial plants discussed.

Trans-resveratrol is a natural stilbenoid possessing multifarious pharmacological benefits; however, when orally consumed, it is rapidly metabolised by colonic microflora and converted to dihydro-resveratrol. Thus, this microbial metabolite is of great therapeutic relevance. In the present study, upon the oral administration of dihydro-resveratrol (10–50 mg/kg), the severity of acute pancreatitis in the cerulein-treated rats was significantly ameliorated as evidenced by decreased α-amylase activities in the plasma and lessened oedema formation in the pancreatic parenchyma. In addition, the generation of intracellular reactive oxidative products, including malondialdehyde and protein carbonyls, was accordingly reduced, so as the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. While inhibiting the activities of NADPH oxidase and myeloperoxidase, the depletion of glutathione was considerably restored. Importantly, the attenuation of pancreatic oxidative damage by dihydro-resveratrol was associated with a down-regulation of the nuclear factor-kappaB and phosphatidylinositol 3′-kinase-serine/threonine kinase signalling pathways. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the solubility of dihydro-resveratrol was at least 5 times higher than trans-resveratrol whilst exhibiting a much lower cytotoxicity. Collectively, the current findings accentuate new mechanistic insight of dihydro-resveratrol in pancreatic oxidative damage and advocate its therapeutic potential for the management of acute pancreatitis, particularly for patients unresponsive to trans-resveratrol due to the lack of proper microbial strains.

Pancreatic fibrosis, a prominent histopathological feature of chronic pancreatitis (CP) and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, is essentially a dynamic process that leads to irreversible scarring of parenchymal tissues of the pancreas. Though the exact mechanisms of its initiation and development are poorly understood, recent studies suggested that the activation of pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) plays a critical role in eliciting such active course of fibrogenesis. Anthraquinone compounds possess anti-inflammatory bioactivities whereas its natural derivative rhein has been shown to effectively reduce tissue edema and free-radical production in rat models of inflammatory conditions. Apart from its anti-inflammatory properties, rhein actually exerts strong anti-fibrotic effects in our current in-vivo and in-vitro experiments. In the mouse model of cerulein-induced CP, prolonged administration of rhein at 50 mg/kg/day significantly decreased immunoreactivities of the principal fibrotic activators alpha-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) on pancreatic sections implicating the activation of PSCs, which is the central tread to fibrogenesis, was attenuated. Consequently, the overwhelmed deposition of extracellular matrix proteins fibronectin 1 (FN1) and type I collagen (COL I-α1) in exocrine parenchyma was found accordingly reduced. In addition, the expression levels of sonic hedgehog (SHH), which plays important roles in molecular modulation of various fibrotic processes, and its immediate effector GLI1 in pancreatic tissues were positively correlated to the degree of cerulein-induced fibrosis. Such up-regulation of SHH signaling was restrained in rhein-treated CP mice. In cultured PSCs, we demonstrated that the expression levels of TGF-β-stimulated fibrogenic markers including α-SMA, FN1 and COL I-α1 as well as SHH were all notably suppressed by the application of rhein at 10 μM. The present study firstly reported that rhein attenuates PSC activation and suppresses SHH/GLI1 signaling in pancreatic fibrosis. With strong anti-fibrotic effects provided, rhein can be a potential remedy for fibrotic and/or PSC-related pathologies in the pancreas.