[CH] that burrito is for my arthritis
Marc&Vickie (maclagan8@bigpond.com)
Sat, 13 Aug 2005 17:01:08 +1000
sounds like the phyto-pharmacologists are catching up to what we've
long known: Eat yo' peppas boyz and girlz.... theyz good for ya! just
don't ask me what a vanillyl moiety is, sounds better ion ice cream
than chilles.
cheers
DrN
Appendino G., Minassi A., and Daddario N. (2005) Hot cuisine as a
source of anti-inflammatory drugs. Phytochemistry Reviews 4(1), 3-10.
The shift in nutritional sciences from survival and safety to the
promotion of well-being has led to systematic investigations on the
biological activity of natural products of dietary origin, questioning
the assumption that food plants contain little if any secondary
metabolites apart those revealed by our senses and responsible for
their colour, taste, and flavour. With 25% of the human population
consuming chilli pepper every day, capsaicin is the most important
pharmacological agent we get from our diet, and the study of its
pungency set in motion a multidisciplinary investigation that
ultimately led to the discovery of vanilloid receptors (TRPVs), a class
of ion channels involved in thermo-, chemo-, and mechanosensation, and
whose malfunctioning is implicated in neurogenic inflammation and a
host of other pathological conditions. A series of studies centred on
the modification of capsaicin will be described, focusing on a) the
preparation of a library of unnatural natural capsaicinoids and the
identification of leads with the lipophilic C-moiety amenable to
structure-activity study, and b) the reversal of the biological
activity of capsaicin from a TRPV1 agonist into an antagonist by
modification of its vanillyl moiety.