Small molecular floribundiquinone B derived from medicinal plants inhibits acetylcholinesterase activity

Oncotarget. 2017 Jul 11;8(34):57149-57162. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.19169. eCollection 2017 Aug 22.

Abstract

Being a neurodegenerative disorder, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the one of the most terrible diseases. And acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is considered as an important target for treating AD. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEI) are considered to be one of the effective drugs for the treatment of AD. The aim of this study is to find a novel potential AChEI as a drug for the treatment of AD. In this study, instead of using the synthetic compounds, we used those extracted from plants to investigate the interaction between floribundiquinone B (FB) and AChE by means of both the experimental approach such as fluorescence spectra, ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption spectrometry, circular dichroism (CD) and the theoretical approaches such as molecular docking. The findings reported here have provided many useful clues and hints for designing more effective and less toxic drugs against Alzheimer's disease.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease (AD); acetylcholinesterase (AChE); floribundiquinone B (FB); fluorescence quenching; plant inhibitor.