Continental and Antarctic Lichens: isolation, identification and molecular modeling of the depside tenuiorin from the Antarctic lichen Umbilicaria antarctica as tau protein inhibitor

• Published in: Natural Product Research
• Main Authors: Salgado, Francisco, Caballero, Julio, Vargas, Reinaldo, Cornejo, Alberto, Areche, Carlos
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor and Francis Ltd. 2018
• Subjects: Alzheimer´s disease; Lichens; Tau protein; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1080/14786419.2018.1492576; https://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/155820

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Alzheimer´s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia involving Aβ and tau protein. So far, AD cure remains elusive, but considering that AD progresses throughout tau pathology, which turns tau protein an appropriate target, besides tau is also included in other neurodegenerative disorders named as tauopathies. Here, we have isolated seventeen compounds belonging to six lichens species. Due to scarce of spectroscopic data of the compound 5,7-dihydroxy-6-methylphthalide, we explained their structural elucidation based on NMR data. In this study, we show that only tenuiorin from Umbilicaria antarctica inhibited 50% of tau 4R at 100 µM. Then, we shown that molecular interactions of tenuiorin with the steric zipper model of the hexapeptide 306VQIVYK311 were studied by docking calculations and the results suggested that tenuiorin forms both hydrogen bonds with lysine and glutamine side chains and forms several hydr