Herbal drug discovery for the treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Tingting Yan; Nana Yan; Ping Wang; Yangliu Xia; Haiping Hao; Guangji Wang; Frank J Gonzalez

doi:10.1016/j.apsb.2019.11.017

Herbal drug discovery for the treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Acta Pharm Sin B. 2020 Jan;10(1):3-18. doi: 10.1016/j.apsb.2019.11.017. Epub 2019 Dec 10.

Authors

Tingting Yan¹, Nana Yan², Ping Wang^{1

3}, Yangliu Xia^{1

4}, Haiping Hao², Guangji Wang², Frank J Gonzalez¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Metabolism, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
² State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, Key Laboratory of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China.
³ Institute of Interdisciplinary Integrative Medicine Research, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 201203, China.
⁴ School of Life Science and Medicine, Dalian University of Technology, Panjin 124221, China.

Abstract

Few medications are available for meeting the increasing disease burden of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and its progressive stage, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Traditional herbal medicines (THM) have been used for centuries to treat indigenous people with various symptoms but without clarified modern-defined disease types and mechanisms. In modern times, NAFLD was defined as a common chronic disease leading to more studies to understand NAFLD/NASH pathology and progression. THM have garnered increased attention for providing therapeutic candidates for treating NAFLD. In this review, a new model called "multiple organs-multiple hits" is proposed to explain mechanisms of NASH progression. Against this proposed model, the effects and mechanisms of the frequently-studied THM-yielded single anti-NAFLD drug candidates and multiple herb medicines are reviewed, among which silymarin and berberine are already under U.S. FDA-sanctioned phase 4 clinical studies. Furthermore, experimental designs for anti-NAFLD drug discovery from THM in treating NAFLD are discussed. The opportunities and challenges of reverse pharmacology and reverse pharmacokinetic concepts-guided strategies for THM modernization and its global recognition to treat NAFLD are highlighted. Increasing mechanistic evidence is being generated to support the beneficial role of THM in treating NAFLD and anti-NAFLD drug discovery.

Keywords: Fatty liver; Metabolic syndrome; NAFLD; Natural products; TCM.

Publication types

Review