| The hot, warm & cold, cool characteristics are basic nature of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM). Clinical experiences show that the effect of herbal drugs with hot and warm characteristics (hot drugs) acting on bodies is stimulating physiological functions, while the drugs with cold and cool characteristics (cold drugs) is inhibitive. Cells are elementary units of human body, so the hot & cold drugs acting on cells should show the same effect. Basing on this hypothesis, the experimental method was set up to evaluate the hot & cold characteristics of (TCM) in this dissertation.The effects of stimulating & inhibiting of cell growth are shown as the speed of proliferation. If the drug's effect is stimulative, cell's proliferation will become faster, on the contrary cell's proliferation will become slower. MTT assay can be used conveniently to evaluate the proliferation in vitro. Cancer cell is easy to cultivate. It is an ideal method if the cultivated cancer cell can be used to evaluate the hot & cold characteristics of TCM. Eight cold drugs and six hot drugs were choosed to approve the effects on the proliferation of MCF-7 in vitro. The results show that in a certain concentration, cold drugs inhibited the proliferation of MCF-7, and hot drugs stimulated. This result is in accordance with the effects that hot & cold drugs act on human body in clinical. So this method can be used to evaluate the hot & cold characteristic of TCM on the cell level. It provides a novel idea and method for studying the hot & cold characteristic of TCM.The herbal drugs cure disease based on its chemical constituents. The effects of hot & cold characteristics of TCM should also be the chemical constituents. In order to reveal the relationship between the hot & cold characteristics of TCM and the chemical structure, twelve sulfur ethers which are main chemical constituents of garlic and spring onion which shown warm characteristics, four methylpyrazine which are chemical constituents of Ligusticum wallichii which is also hot drug, eight kinds of aldehyde and four related organic acid and two kinds of hydroxybenzene and furfurylmercaptan are evaluated. The purpose of this study is to reveal the hot & cold characteristic of these compounds and the relationship between the chemical structure and hot & cold characteristic. The results show that twelve sulfur ethers, four methylpyrazine, four organic acid, two hydroxybenzene and furfurylmercaptan promote the proliferation of MCF-7 in vitro. These compounds may response the hot characteristic of the drugs which contain them. The effects of eight aldehydes on the proliferation of MCF-7 in vitro are different. Vanillin, o-vanillin and octyl aldehyde are stimulative in the low concentration range and inhibitive in the higher concentration. The effect of undecanal, salicylic aldehyde, piperonal, and benzaldehyde are inhibitive in the chosen concentration. These results indicate that the hot & cold characteristics of compounds are not only related to the functional group, but also related to the other structural parts, it should be considered wholely. |
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