REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Ethnopharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1605214
This article is part of the Research TopicPharmacology of Natural Products against Neurodegenerative DisordersView all 19 articles
Pharmacological mechanisms and therapeutic prospects of plant metabolites from traditional Chinese medicine in regulating programmed cell death in Alzheimer's disease
Provisionally accepted
- Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, China
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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder marked by cognitive decline and neuronal loss. Multiple forms of programmed cell death (PCD)—including apoptosis, pyroptosis, ferroptosis, cuproptosis, and disulfidoptosis—contribute to its pathogenesis, regulated by protein families such as caspases, RIPKs, gasdermins, and ATGs. Plant metabolites widely distributed across medicinal plants and enriched in botanical drugs used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), such as alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins, and polysaccharides, have attracted increasing attention for their potential regulatory effects on these PCD pathways.These metabolites are not unique to TCM, but their prevalence in TCM prescriptions provides a valuable framework for pharmacological investigation. Their biological activities are often determined by structural features—for example, the isoquinoline scaffold of berberine enhances membrane permeability, facilitating neuroprotective actions. Despite substantial research, comprehensive summaries remain limited. This review systematically integrates progress from the past two decades on how plant metabolites, particularly those enriched in TCM botanical drugs, regulate PCD in AD, with the aim of clarifying pharmacological mechanisms and highlighting prospects for drug discovery and clinical translation.
Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, Traditional Chinese Medicine, programmed cell death, plant metabolites, Neuroprotection, ferroptosis, Apoptosis
Received: 03 Apr 2025; Accepted: 03 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pan, 腾宇, Jian, Zhou, Zhang, Li and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yanyan Zhou, Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, China
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