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Epimedium and its vascularization-promoting ability

06/05/2019 // Evangelyn Rodriguez // Views

Tags: aging, alternative medicine, angiogenesis, blood vessels, bone diseases, Bones, disease treatments, endothelial cells, epimedin C, goodhealth, goodmedicine, goodscience, Herba Epimedii, herbal medicine, Herbs, natural cures, natural medicine, osteogenesis, research, TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, tumor, vascularization, vasculogenesis, yinyanghuo

Researchers from Zhejiang Chinese Medical University examined the in vivo effects of epimedin C on vasculogenesis using a mouse model. The results of their study were published in The American Journal of Chinese Medicine.

• Epimedin C is a major flavonoid found in Herba Epimedii (yin yang huo), a traditional Chinese medicinal herb used to treat bone diseases and gonadal dysfunction.
• In their previous study, the researchers found that epimedin C could induce endothelial-like (but not osteogenic) differentiation of C3H/10T1/2 cells in vitro.
• Since they know that vasculogenesis plays a pivotal role in bone formation, they used a bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP2)-induced ectopic bone formation model and mice 4T1 breast cancer cells co-implanted with luciferase-labeled C3H/10T1/2 cells (4T1 + C3H/10T1/2-Luc) model in this study.
• The researchers reported the following results:

  • Epimedin C significantly increased the bone weight and blood perfusion of mice in the BMP2=induced ectopic osteogenesis model.
  • The bone in the epimedin C + BMP2 group was more mature than that in the BMP2 group.
  • Tumor weight, blood perfusion, and tumor-associated angiogenesis were also significantly increased in the epimedin C-treated 4T1 tumor-bearing mice.
  • The mRNA levels of endothelial markers – namely, the platelet endothelial adhesive factor-1 (CD31), the endothelial cell-specific molecule-1 (ESM-1), and the vascular von Willebrand factor (vWF) in mouse 4T1 mammary tumor tissue -- were found to occur alongside the luciferase (labeled in C3H/10T1/2 cells) expression and significantly increased after epimedin C treatment.

Based on these results, the researchers concluded that epimedin C effectively promotes vascularization both in the BMP2-dependent bone formation model and in the 4T1 mammary tumor-bearing model by inducing the endothelial-like differentiation of C3H/10T1/2 in vivo.

Journal Reference:

Shui YM, Lv GY, Shan LT, Fan CL, Tian N, Zhang L, He TC, Gao JL. EPIMEDIN C PROMOTES VASCULARIZATION DURING BMP2-INDUCED OSTEOGENESIS AND TUMOR-ASSOCIATED ANGIOGENESIS. The American Journal of Chinese Medicine. 2017;45(05):1093–1111. DOI: 10.1142/s0192415x17500598

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