Anti-inflammatory effects of glaucocalyxin B in microglia cells

Over-activated microglia is involved in various kinds of neurodegenerative process including parkinson,alzheimer and hiv dementia. suppression of microglial over activation has emerged as a novel strategy for treatment of neuroinflammation-based neurodegeneration. in the current study,anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects of the ent-kauranoid diterpenoids,which were isolated from the aerial parts of rabdosia japonica (burm. f.) var. glaucocalyx (maxim.) hara,were investigated in cultured microglia cells. glaucocalyxin b (glb),one of five ent-kauranoid diterpenoids,significantly decreased the generation of nitric oxide (no),tumor necrosis factor (tnf)-α,interleukin (il)-1β,cyclooxygenase (cox)-2 and inducible nitric oxide synthase (inos) in the lipopolysaccharide (lps)-activated microglia cells. in addition,glb inhibited activation of nuclear factor-κb (nf-κb),p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (mapk) and generation of reactive oxygen species (ros) in lps-activated microglia cells. furthermore,glb strongly induced the expression of heme oxygenase (ho)-1 in bv-2 microglia cells. finally,glb exhibited neuroprotective effect by preventing over-activated microglia induced neurotoxicity in a microglia/neuron co-culture model. taken together,the present study demonstrated that the glb possesses anti-nueroinflammatory activity,and might serve as a potential therapeutic agent for treating neuroinflammatory diseases. © 2015 the authors. production and hosting by elsevier b.v. on behalf of japanese pharmacological society. this is an open access article under the cc by-nc-nd license.