Plant glycoconjugates, structure, properties and biological activity

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The therapeutic effects of medicinal plants used in traditional medicine were evaluated only on the basis of the empirical practice. Searching for active biopolymers with antitussive and bronchodilatory properties, several plants were investigated in term of chemical structure and their pharmacodynamics properties. The study was focused on the extractable polymer complexes of flowering parts of medicinal plants. Alkaline extractions of flowers from selected herbs afforded the dark-brown glycoconjugates (polysaccharide-protein-phenolic complexes) differing in molecular mass, carbohydrate, phenolic and protein contents. Carbohydrate parts of conjugates were rich mainly in rhamnogalacturonans/galacturonans and arabinogalactans. Antitussive activity tests showed in some conjugates the reduction of the number of cough efforts in the dose-dependent manner, while in some conjugates this dose dependence was not observed. The tests evaluating the influence of different doses of conjugates on airway smooth muscle reactivity revealed more significant effect of some plant conjugates in comparison with a commercial bronchodilator used. Comparative tests showed that antitussive activity of the most effective conjugate was lower than that of codeine, the strongest antitussive drug used in the clinical practice. Some glycoconjugates were shown to be promising candidates for the application in the herbal medicine as antitussive and bronchodilatory agents.