The search for natural inhibitors with anti-diabetes properties has gained increasing attention. Among four selected Smilacaceae family plants, Smilax china L. stems (SCS) showed significant in vitro anti-glycation and rat lens aldose reductase inhibitory activities. Bioactivity-guided isolation was performed with SCS and four solvent fractions were obtained, which in turn yielded 10 compounds,...

A reactive intermediate generated by lipid peroxidation, 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (HNE), has received considerable attention as a potential effector of oxidative damage and Abeta peptide-mediated neurotoxicity in Alzheimer disease (AD). However, little is known about aldo-keto oxidoreductases, a group of enzymes that constitute a major detoxifying pathway for HNE and related reactive aldehydes in hu...

WF-2421 is a novel aldose reductase inhibitor produced by Humicola grisea. WF-2421 was purified from the culture filtrate by successive ion exchange chromatography and the chemical structure was assigned to be alpha-formamido-5'-(2-formamido-1-hydroxyethyl)- beta,2',6-trihydroxy-3-biphenylpropanoic acid (1) on the basis of spectroscopic evidence. The IC50 value of WF-2421 was 3 x 10(-8) M again...

Using a rat lens organ-culture model, the authors investigated whether PM could inhibit AGE formation in the diabetic lens. They measured lens AGEs and relevant biochemical mediators including glutathione and the activities of aldose reductase and glyoxalase in normal and diabetic rat lenses. The results of this study showed that PM failed to block cataract development. However, PM treatment wa...

A serious factor limiting the engineering of stress tolerance has been our ignorance about the function of stress-induced genes. A stress-activated novel aldose-aldehyde reductase was cloned from alfalfa. The ectopic expression of this gene in tobacco resulted in tolerance to oxidative stress and dehydration. Physiological analysis suggested that aldose reductase probably functions by reducing ...

BACKGROUND Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response syndrome characterized by excessive production of inflammatory cytokines and cardiovascular collapse. Postreceptor signaling events that lead to stress responses and cytokine production are sensitive to redox changes and products of lipid peroxidation. METHODS AND RESULTS We tested the hypothesis that inflammatory signaling and cytokine ge...