NMR-based Metabolomic Techniques Identify the Anticancer Effects of Three Polyphyllins in HepG2 Cells

Background Rhizoma paridis (RP) is a traditional Chinese herb used for the treatment of tumors, detoxification and hemostasia. Studies show the main components of RP are Polyphyllin I (PPI), polyphyllin VI (PPVI), and polyphyllin VII (PPVII). However, the pharmaco-mechanisms of these compounds are not clear. Objectives: By used H-1 nuclear magnetic resonance (H-1-NMR) based metabolomics approach to identify the Anticancer effects of PPI, PPVI and PPVII in HepG2 cells. Methods H-1 nuclear magnetic resonance (H-1-NMR) based metabolomics approach was applied to investigate the toxicological effect of PPI, PPVI, PPVII on HepG2 cells. Multivariate statistical analysis was employed to examine the metabolic changes and abnormal metabolic pathways, including Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA), and orthogonal PLS-DA (OPLS-DA). Results The results showed that the effects of metabolic phenotypes were affected separately by PPI, PPVI, and PPVII. The metabolic phenotypes were also changed over time. The characteristic metabolites were varied by affecting different polyphylins, which were identified by the reconstructed OPLS-DA loading plots. According to the characteristic metabolites, the mainly disturbed metabolic pathways were found, such as alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism, pyruvate metabolism, glycine, serine, and threonine metabolism. Conclusion The current work could allow us to understand the therapeutic effect of RP in metabolism. It also indicated that RP would be a promising candidate for liver cancer treatment.