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Pharmacognosy 2019
March 11-12, 2019
London, UK
American Journal of Ethnomedicine
ISSN: 2348-9502
Page 54
Pharmacognosy and
Medicinal Plants
7
th
Edition of International Conference on
Am J Ethnomed 2019, Volume 6
DOI: 10.21767/2348-9502-C1-009
Glycyrrhizic acid as a multifunctional drug carrier: A
modern insight on the ancient drug
Nikolay E Polyakov
and
Olga Yu Selyutina
Voevodsky Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion - Siberian Branch, Russia
G
lycyrrhizic acid is the main active component of
Licorice root which has been known in traditional
Chinese and Japanese medicine since ancient times. In
these cultures glycyrrhizic acid (GA) is one of the most
frequently used drugs. However, only in 21
st
century a
novel unusual property of GA to enhance the activity of
other drugs has been discovered. In this report author
will describe briefly the experimental evidences of wide
spectrum of own biological activity of glycyrrhizic acid
as well as discuss the possible mechanisms of the
ability of GA to enhance the activity of other drugs. We
have shown that due to its amphiphilic nature GA is able
to form self-associates in aqueous and non-aqueous
media, as well as water soluble complexes with a wide
range of lipophilic drugs. We focus our attention on
physicochemical studies of the molecular mechanisms
of GA activity as a drug delivery system (DDS). In our
opinion, the most intriguing feature of glycyrrhizic acid
which might be the key factor in its therapeutic activity
is the ability of GA to incorporate into the lipid bilayer and
to change various physical and functional properties of
cell membrane, for example to increase the membrane
fluidity and permeability. The ability of biomolecules
derived from medicinal plants to change the properties
of cell membranes is of great significance from both
fundamental and practical points of view.