Small molecular floribundiquinone B derived from medicinal plants inhibits acetylcholinesterase activity

// Bing Niu 1, 3, * , Mengying Zhang 1, * , Pu Du 4, * , Li Jiang 1 , Rui Qin 6 , Qiang Su 1 , Fuxue Chen 1 , Dongshu Du 1, 7 , Yilai Shu 5 and Kuo-Chen Chou 2, 3 1 Shanghai Key Laboratory of Bio-Energy Crops, College of Life Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China 2 Center for Informational Biology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China 3 Gordon Life Science Institute, Boston, MA 02478, USA 4 Department of Neurology, The First People's Hospital of Foshan, Foshan, 528000, China 5 Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, Eye and Ear, Nose, Throat, Hospital, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200031, China 6 Department of Gynecology, Affiliated Minzu Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Minzu Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nanning, 530001, China 7 Department of Life Science, Heze University, Heze, Shandong, 274500, China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Bing Niu, email: bniu@gordonlifescience.org , bingniu@shu.edu.cn Fuxue Chen, email: chenfuxue@staff.shu.edu.cn Dongshu Du, email: sdhzdds@163.com Yilai Shu, email: yilai_shu@fudan.edu.cn Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease (AD), floribundiquinone B (FB), plant inhibitor, acetylcholinesterase (AChE), fluorescence quenching Received: May 07, 2017      Accepted: June 28, 2017      Published: July 11, 2017 ABSTRACT Being a neurodegenerative disorder, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the one of the most terrible diseases. And acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is considered as an important target for treating AD. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEI) are considered to be one of the effective drugs for the treatment of AD. The aim of this study is to find a novel potential AChEI as a drug for the treatment of AD. In this study, instead of using the synthetic compounds, we used those extracted from plants to investigate the interaction between floribundiquinone B (FB) and AChE by means of both the experimental approach such as fluorescence spectra, ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption spectrometry, circular dichroism (CD) and the theoretical approaches such as molecular docking. The findings reported here have provided many useful clues and hints for designing more effective and less toxic drugs against Alzheimer’s disease.