Autophagy Modulators From Chinese Herbal Medicines: Mechanisms and Therapeutic Potentials for Asthma
Zhang Yun, Wang Xing, Zhang He, Tang Hongmei, Hu Hang, Wang Songping, Wong Vincent Kam Wai, Li Yuying, Deng Jun · Frontiers in Pharmacology · 2021 July 23
DOI 10.3389/fphar.2021.710679
Objective
Some findings suggest autophagy is closely correlated with the severity of asthma through eosinophilic inflammation, and its modulation may provide novel therapeutic approaches for severe allergic asthma.
Conclusions
The chinese herbal medicine (CHM) have been demonstrated clinically as potent therapeutic interventions for asthma. Moreover some reports have found that the bioactive components isolated from CHM could modulate autophagy, and exhibit potent Anti-inflammatory activity. These findings have implied the potential for CHMs in asthma or allergic inflammation therapy via the modulation of autophagy. In this review, we discuss the basic pathomechanisms underpinning asthma, and the potential role of CHMs in treating asthma with modulating autophagy.
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Insights
The autophagic-regulatory effects of Chinese herbal medicine are potentially therapeutic for allergic inflammatory diseases such as asthma.
Chinese herbal medicine is one of the main lines of complementary and alternative therapy of bronchial asthma, as it is the third most popular choice of both adults and children suffering from this condition. An increasing number of CHMs have been discovered as autophagy modulators. Such autophagic-regulatory effects are potentially therapeutic for allergic inflammatory diseases such as asthma.
Although we have found that many autophagy modulators isolated from anti-asthmatic-CHMs were possibly related to new mechanisms and functions of these plants in the treatment of asthma diseases, we are still far away from translating these traditional herbs or formula into clinical applications in asthma therapy.
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