Pharmacology

Biography

Biography: Clelia Akiko Hiruma-Lima

Abstract

The increase in human life expectancy has required the development of new drugs to treat several chronic diseases such as peptic ulcer disease (PUD). The PUD is a complex and multifactorial process including bacterial infections, the increase of acid secretion, generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), inhibition of the endogenous PGs, and the degradation of the extracellular matrix. This disease has increasing in elderly people because the intrinsic weak mucosal barrier induced by aging and also the more frequent use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). The last decade has offered new insights in the preventative therapy and also the healing of PUD and the synergistic efficiency of standardized herbal drugs could be the new perspective for treatment of this disease. In our project entitle "Standardized extracts for the treatment of chronic disease" (Biota/FAPESP) our research group realized integrative studies with multidisciplinary approach with phytochemical, pharmacological and toxicological assays. Based on this integrative studies we evaluated more than 20 medicinal species according the pharmacopeia standard and evaluated their ensure efficacy and safety of herbal medicines as antiulcer drug. The antiulcer studies of these extracts were investigated against different ulcerogenic agents including NSAID, HCl, pyloric ligature, absolute ethanol and ischemia–reperfusion procedure. We evaluated the gastroprotective effect of extracts by analyzing the gastric juice secretion, mucus, nitric oxide (NO), sulfhydryl compound, vanilloid receptor, glutathione (GSH) levels, and myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity in the gastric and duodenal mucosa. We also evaluated the gastric and duodenal healing effects of extracts and evaluated the effect of matrix metalloproteinase activity (MMP-2 and MMP-9) and roles of VEGF, PCNA, and COX-2 in cell proliferation.