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Updated: Dec 29, 2025

Facilitating Drug Discovery: An Automated High-content Inflammation Assay in Zebrafish
Published on: July 16, 2012
Anti-inflammatory activity of isobutylamides from zanthoxylum nitidum var. tomentosum
Feng Qin1, Cai-Yi Wang2, Ruoci Hu2
1State Key Laboratory for Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Medicinal Resources, School of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Science, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, Guangxi, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Inflammation is a very common and important basic pathological process. There is still a great need for the isolation of effective anti-inflammatory agents from plants. In this paper, five new isobutylamides, zanthoxylumamides E-I (1-5), and four known isobutylamides (6-9) were isolated from Zanthoxylum nitidum var. tomentosum (Rutaceae). Chiral resolution of seven racemic isobutylamides (1-4 and 6-8) was successfully performed, and the absolute configurations of two stereoisomers of 1-4 were validated by ECD and NMR. The obtained isobutylamides were evaluated in vitro anti-inflammatory activity with the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated production of nitric oxide (NO) in murine macrophage RAW264.7 cells. Compound 8 exhibited significant inhibition of LPS-induced NO production. The underlying molecular mechanisms of the anti-inflammatory activity of 8 revealed that it suppressed the NO production through the modulation of myeloid differentiation factor 88 (MyD88) and interferon regulatory factor 3 (IRF3) signaling pathways.
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