rhynchophylline protects cultured rat neurons against methamphetamine cytotoxicity钩藤碱保护培养大鼠神经元对甲基苯丙胺细胞毒性.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2012, Article ID 636091, 7 pages doi:10.1155/2012/636091 Research Article Rhynchophylline Protects Cultured Rat Neurons against Methamphetamine Cytotoxicity Dan Dan Xu,1, 2 Robin Hoeven,3 Rong Rong,4 and William Chi-Shing Cho5 1 Faculty of Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 2 Jiujianpeng Technology RD Center, Linyi, China 3 Faculty of Science, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium 4 School of Pharmacy, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan, China 5 Department of Clinical Oncology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hong Kong Correspondence should be addressed to William Chi-Shing Cho, chocs@.hk Received 19 November 2011; Accepted 7 February 2012 Academic Editor: Ilkay Erdogan Orhan Copyright © 2012 Dan Dan Xu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Rhynchophylline (Rhy) is an active component isolated from species of the genus Uncaria which has been used for the treatment of ailments to the central nervous system in traditional Chinese medicine. Besides acting as a calcium channel blocker, Rhy was also reported to be able to protect against glutamate-induced neuronal death. We thus hypothesize that Rhy may have neuroprotective activity against methamphetamine (MA). The primary neurons were cultured directly from the cerebral cortex of neonatal rats, acting as in vitro model in the present study. The neurotoxicity of MA and the protective effect of Rhy were evaluated by MTT assay. The effects of MA, Rhy or their combination on intracellular