Praeruptorin a Enantiomers Exert Distinct Relaxant Effects on Isolated Rat Aorta Rings Dependent on Endothelium and Nitric Oxide Synthesis
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Chemico-Biological Interactions 186 (2010) 239–246 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Chemico-Biological Interactions journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/chembioint (±)-Praeruptorin A enantiomers exert distinct relaxant effects on isolated rat aorta rings dependent on endothelium and nitric oxide synthesis Zhao Xu a,1, Xiaobing Wang b,1, Yue Dai a,∗, Lingyi Kong b,∗, Fengyun Wang a, Huan Xu a, Dan Lu a, Jie Song a, Zhiguo Hou b a Department of Pharmacology of Chinese Materia Medica, China Pharmaceutical University, 24 Tong Jia Xiang, Nanjing 210009, Jiangsu, China b Department of Natural Medicinal Chemistry, China Pharmaceutical University, 24 Tong Jia Xiang, Nanjing 210009, Jiangsu, China article info abstract Article history: Praeruptorin A is a coumarin compound naturally occurring in the roots of Peucedanum praeruptorum Received 6 February 2010 Dunn., a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of certain respiratory dis- Received in revised form 16 April 2010 eases and hypertension. Although previous studies indicated the relaxant effects of (±)-praeruptorin Accepted 19 April 2010 A on tracheal and arterial preparations, little is known about the functional characteristics of the enan- Available online 28 April 2010 tiomers. In the present study, the two enantiomers were successfully isolated and identified by using a preparative Daicel Chiralpak AD-H column, and their relaxant effects on aorta rings were observed Keywords: and compared. (+)-Praeruptorin A showed more potent relaxation than (−)-praeruptorin A against KCl- (±)-Praeruptorin A Aorta and phenylephrine-induced contraction of rat isolated aortic rings with intact endothelium. Removal − Relaxation of the endothelium remarkably reduced the relaxant effect of (+)-praeruptorin A but not that of ( )- Endothelium praeruptorin A. Pretreatment of aortic rings with N -nitro-l-arginine methyl ester (l-NAME, an inhibitor Nitric oxide of nitric oxide synthase) or methylene blue (MB, a soluble guanylyl cyclase inhibitor) resulted in simi- lar changes of the relaxant effects of the two enantiomers to endothelium removal. Molecular docking studies also demonstrated that (+)-praeruptorin A was in more agreement to nitric oxide synthase phar- macophores than (−)-praeruptorin A. On the other hand, the two enantiomers of praeruptorin A could slightly attenuate the contraction of rat aortic rings induced by internal Ca2+ release from sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR). These findings indicated that (+)-praeruptorin A and (−)-praeruptorin A exerted distinct relaxant effects on isolated rat aorta rings, which might be mainly attributed to nitric oxide synthesis catalyzed by endothelial nitric oxide synthase. © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction muscles [3]. (+)-Praeruptorin A can improve the vascular hypertro- phy by decreasing the area of smooth muscle cells (SMCs), collagen 2+ The dry roots of Peucedanum praeruptorum Dunn. (Baihua content and [Ca ]i in SMCs, and by increasing nitric oxide (NO) pro- Qianhu) have long been used in traditional Chinese medicine for duction in renovascular and spontaneously hypertensive rats [4]. the treatments of certain respiratory diseases such as cough and It is also able to decrease the blood pressure, the amount of colla- asthma, and pulmonary hypertension. The decoctions of the roots gen in the left ventricular and ameliorate the systolic and diastolic are able to relax tracheal and pulmonary arterial preparations [1]. functions of the heart in renal hypertensive rats [5], and decrease P. praeruptorum contains various angular-type pyranocoumarins, the maximum contractile effect of Ca2+ in potassium-depolarized such as (±)-praeruptorin A and B and (+)-praeruptorin A and B [2]. swine coronary strips and shift the concentration–responses curve (±)-Praeruptorin A can effectively relax ileum and tracheal smooth to right in a non-parallel manner [6]. These findings suggest that praeruptorin A is the main bioactive constituent of P. praeruptorum roots for vascular smooth muscle relaxation. Given that the enantiomers of many compounds show distinct Abbreviations: l-NAME, N-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester; MB, methylene blue; SMCs, smooth muscle cells; NO, nitric oxide; PE, phenylephrine; ACh, acetylcholine and even adverse pharmacological action, a comparative study of chloride; TEA, tetraethylammonium; EDTA, ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid; sGC, bioactivities of praeruptorin A enantiomers is essential for under- soluble guanylate cyclase; cGMP, cyclic guanosine monophosphate; PKG, cGMP- standing the action characteristics of the two compounds. In the dependent protein kinase; IP3, inositol-1,4,5-triphosphate. ± ∗ present study, we separated ( )-praeruptorin A from the dried Corresponding authors. roots of P. praeruptorum Dunn. by preparative HPLC, and success- E-mail addresses: [email protected] (Y. Dai), cpu [email protected] (L. Kong). fully isolated the two enantiomers by using a preparative Daicel 1 These authors equally contributed to this paper. Chiralpak AD-H column. The differences of the relaxant effects on 0009-2797/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cbi.2010.04.024 240 Z. Xu et al. / Chemico-Biological Interactions 186 (2010) 239–246 Fig. 3. The molecular structures of (±)-praeruptorin A. spectra of (±)-praeruptorin A in CDCl3 were obtained on a 500 MHz and 125 MHz NMR spectrometer. 1H NMR 6.23 (1H, d, J = 9.5 Hz, C3- H), 7.60 (1H, d, J = 9.5 Hz, C4-H), 7.35 (1H, d, J = 8.6 Hz, C5-H), 6.80 (1H, d, J = 8.6 Hz, C6-H), 5.41 (1H, d, J = 4.8 Hz, C3-H), 6.60 (1H, d, Fig. 1. UV–vis spectra of the (±)-praeruptorin A stereoisomers. J = 4.8 Hz, C4 -H), 1.43 (3H, s, C2 -CH3), 1.47 (3H, s, C2 -CH3), 6.13 (1H, br q, J = 7.3 Hz, C3-H), 1.96 (1H, br d, J = 7.3 Hz, C4-H), 1.88 (1H, br s, C5-H), 2.11 (3H, s, C2-H). 13C NMR 159.91 (C-2), 113.18 rat aorta rings between the two enantiomers and related mecha- (C-3), 143.30 (C-4), 129.15 (C-5), 114.34 (C-6), 129.15 (C-7), 156.73 nisms were addressed in vitro. (C-8), 153.99 (C-9), 112.53 (C-10), 77.71 (C-2), 69.75 (C-3), 61.02 (C-4 ), 24.89 (C-2 -CH3), 22.98 (C-2 -CH3), 166.46 (C-1 ), 126.95 2. Materials and methods (C-2 ), 139.81 (C-3 ), 15.77 (C-4 ), 20.51 (C-5 ), 169.81 (C-1 ), 20.66 (C-2). There are two chiral carbon atoms in the molecular 2.1. Preparation of (±)-praeruptorin A structures of (±)-praeruptorin A. It was reported that the relative configuration of the type of compounds can be determined by its 1 13 Fifty grams of dried roots of P. praeruptorum Dunn. were pulver- H NMR and C NMR. The relative configuration at C-3 and C-4 ized and extracted with 100 mL of light petroleum (boiling range in the pyrane ring was cis form based on the coupling constants of 60–90 ◦C) three times (2 h, 1 h and 1 h, respectively). Then, the light C-3 -H (ı 5.41, d, J = 4.8 Hz) and C-4 -H (ı 6.60, d, J = 4.8 Hz), and in 1 petroleum solutions were combined and concentrated by rotary H NMR, the difference between the methyl proton signals at ı 1.43 13 vaporization at 65 ◦C. The residual liquid was frozen under −4 ◦C for and ı 1.47 of the 2 -gem-dimethyl group was 0.04 ppm; in C NMR, 48 h. The precipitate (2 g) was collected by filtration and separated the difference between the methyl carbon signals at ı 22.98 and ı by preparative HPLC to afford (±)-praeruptorin A 300 mg. 24.89 of the 2 -gem-dimethyl group was 1.91 ppm. Their absolute UV–vis spectra of the (±)-praeruptorin A stereoisomers in configurations were elucidated by chemical correlation with khel- MeOH were taken on Shimadzu UV-2450 spectrophotometer, and lactones. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis (Fig. 2) affirmed 1 13 ± showed Kmax at 322 nm and 220 nm (Fig. 1). H NMR and CNMR the structures of ( )-praeruptorin A (Fig. 3). Fig. 2. The single-crystal X-ray diffraction diagram of (±)-praeruptorin A. Z. Xu et al. / Chemico-Biological Interactions 186 (2010) 239–246 241 Fig. 4. (A) The HPLC chromatogram of the enantiomers of (±)-praeruptorin A. (B) The CD spectra of the enantiomers. 2.2. Isolation of the (±)-praeruptorin A stereoisomers isometrically via a force–displacement transducer connected to a MedLab BL-410 Polygraph (Tai Meng Technology, Chengdu, China). (±)-Praeruptorin A was further separated by using a prepar- ative Daicel Chiralpak AD-H column, with 90:10 ratio of hexane/isopropanol solvent system. CD spectra of the enantiomer 2.6. Measurement of isometric vascular tone in MeOH were obtained on J-810 CD spectrometer. It showed that the isolated enantiomers had classical Cotton effect (Fig. 4). Each aortic ring was allowed to equilibrate for 30 min under a basal resting tension of 1.5 g. Before each experiment, the rings were first contracted with a single concentration of KCl (60 mM) or 2.3. Drugs and reagents PE (1 M) to test their contractility. After which, they were rinsed with Krebs–Henseleit solution for several times until the basal level Phenylephrine (PE), acetylcholine chloride (ACh), N-nitro- of tension was restored. The rings were then allowed to equili- l-arginine methyl ester (l-NAME, an inhibitor of nitric oxide brate further for 30 min. To confirm intact endothelium, each ring synthase), methylene blue (MB, a soluble guanylyl cyclase was contracted with PE (1 M) and then exposed to ACh (10 M), inhibitor), tetraethylammonium (TEA, a nonselective K+ channel endothelium-dependent vasodilator, at the peak of the contrac- blocker) and heparin (a selective IP R inhibitor) were purchased 3 tion.